The Thursday Thought - Communications

Communications in the 21st Century

I write this now, an e-mail no less, in such a form to communicate easily to the masses about modern communications. Why? Well, why not?

The need to socialise is something which remains deep in the roots of our society, and most other societies in the natural world, with groups of animals being able to communicate very well between each other but not necessarily between different species. Either way, it happens and it’s been happening for much longer than we could quite imagine or picture properly.

Communication, the exchange of words used to be such a simple thing, as one could only talk to people they met face to face, be it on the street, shop owners, friends from the pub or social club or simply a neighbour. Gossip was as rife then as it is now, but it was harder to keep a good social life going.

Then came the invention of the telephone, revolutionising the way we talked. These heavy, chunky pieces of machinery altered everything, as every house in the country soon had one to use, be it a street phone or a personal phone. Wired into the house, these allowed conversations to be held without actually seeing the person in question, but there was always the option of turning it off, or leaving the house so you couldn’t hear it ring and answer it. A problem which was solved by the brilliant answering machine, as short messages could be taken in your absence from not answering the telephone personally.

Things held stable, but things were to take one major step before reaching what they are now. The Internet and the mobile phone suddenly sprang into existence at much the same time, and in our society now, are integral parts of how we work and what we do. Signs have appeared, laws put into place about not using your mobile phone, restrictions put on the Internet, etc. but what have been the effects?

The mobile phone has made a massive impact on how things are today, and the world without them is almost unimaginable. Starting off as phones that could be used anywhere, be it for safety or for works purposes, they have spiralled into texting machines, cameras, MP3 players, radios, game machines, and so much more. The younger generations are now reachable essentially anywhere and everywhere with their mobile phone, and the government can easily track you by following your phone signal across the networks. Text messaging has taken over from voice calls though, removing a certain part of the art of conversation from life, and the price of characters has given birth to a whole new segment of language. Txt spk. Missing vowels, numbers as letters, gross contractions and misspelling are common place, with no punctuation necessary.

The Internet has made this sort of speaking in text even more common place, offering free services to talk to friends or family or complete strangers in simple plain text, with no elegance or beauty, just simple functionality. Gone are the days of writing a letter, sending a card, now its e-mail and e-cards, again removing the human element of communication slightly further still. Suddenly, talking to people face to face becomes so much harder, so much trickier that some struggle to keep a conversation going with others.

But, is it all a bad thing? I mean, the mobile phone had made us all reachable from everyone everywhere, to the point of extreme annoyance, but, it’s given birth to a whole new realm of communications. As cities get bigger and friends living further away, the night time text conversation is like the over-the-garden-fence conversations of old. We’ve gotten a whole lot closer, and saying more to each other than what we might be doing without the mobile phone. And, it still allows phone calls, but with 3G coming into play now across all the major networks at long last the face to face conversation, albeit through a camera, is being updated for the 21st Century. This has to be classed as progress, as it brings so many people together with such ease.

The Internet has also brought some good with it, as far as communications go. As instant messenger conversations allow people to stay at home yet still talk to their friends as if they were together, not as slow as a text conversation but without the ‘pressures’ of an actual phone call, we’re all talking more to those people whom we might be scared to actually phone or talk to face to face from fear of nerves. It’s also made the prospect of long-distance friendships possible, allowing simple and effective conversations to take place from different parts of the country and even the world. E-mail has given us all a cheap way of writing to one another, with more efficiency, speed and guarantee than letters have.

Inevitably, this all has to come at a price, and person to person skills involving face to face presentations have suffered, with small slides in quality of English to boot. Is it justified by the advantages though? Does the bringing together of so many millions of people in one huge forum far outweigh what has been lost compared to 10, 20, 50 or 100 years ago?

I am undecided. There are persuasive arguments for both sides of the argument, but which one comes out on top? I can’t say.


Join the debate (No, this isn’t a Times advert!)and don’t be afraid to have your say!