The last couple of posts about the 1916 Audion and the misadventure in school that resulted from my weekend activities got me thinking a little bit about how we’ve evolved our electronic technology over the years and yet how much really has remained the same. In just a bit over 150 years, we have gone from carrying messages by hand, to sending them electrically via the telegraph, then transmitting voice via the telephone, and then wirelessly via radio and television….followed by the massive data transmission via satellites and smartphones that we now take for granted.
We often like to believe that what we have with the modern internet is radically different and new, but this is really not the case. Sure, it is far faster and far more capable…but beyond this it is remarkably the same as the telegraph of the Victorian era. A message concerning business or personal matters, news, or gossip is transmitted out….it flows through a set of hubs and nodes, being routed in the most effective way possible until it reaches its destination. Just like our modern internet, the telegraphic systems of the world performed the same exact functions routing messages between stations, encoding and decoding as necessary. The difference, of course, is the speed and the volume of data. The choosing of how to encode the message and how to route it are no longer performed by human hands but by the “black box” of a computer with no moving parts and without wavering of attention. In mere milliseconds it is done.
We usually do not even think about it. Until, of course, traffic volume or other issues slow the process. And then think about it we do. We fret and sometimes swear over the slowed download of our favorite movie or the delayed placement of a bid on that must-have item in the seconds before the auction ends…….you know it’s true……..just as our great grandparents fretted about how long the mail took or why the messenger boy from the telegraph office didn’t pedal his bicycle faster to deliver the anxiously awaited news. At this moment, though separated by geography and decades, we share the same emotions and when you give this a little thought you realize how very little has really changed, other than perhaps our attention span and level of patience.
