– It seems that every day new technologies become available with the promise to help make one’s life better, easier, or more fulfilled. In addition to improved communications, like the ability to use video phones that allow us to communicate instantly with anyone around the world, and sometimes even out in inner space, there are also microchips that when implanted into someone’s limb, or brain, can compensate for disabilities, injuries, birth defects and much more. To understand communications and these sometimes-complicated technologies, I think is important to take a trip back in time and explore their development and introduction.
According to popular knowledge, around 2,000 years ago, the Chinese started recording drawings and writings on cloth. Some 15,000 years earlier cave dwellers in Southwestern France left drawings on walls, while the Aztecs and Mayas in the Americas created intricate carvings as their form of communication. The Gutenberg printing press in the 1400’s and paper itself, were also new technologies once. With printing came a variety of communication examples like books, invitations, letters, newspapers, and much more. Let’s think big, the distribution of the Bible was made possible, as was the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence all because of paper, and mass distribution.
The documents that represent the pillars of our democracy started with drafts on sheepskin and ink from a feathered pen. As for the humble beginnings of mass communication, the star of the show is paper, not a hard drive, not a USB device nor storage in a cloud, but while these inventions will have a profound impact on history, paper even some 2000 years after its humble invention in Chins is still the most influential tool in the marketplace.
The world still relies a lot on paper, and for a long time, that was the only type of communication available to society, there was a time, when a letter, with a message, could take over five months to reach the receiver. Today an email is slow, and if it takes more than five seconds to reach its recipient, it is not an email, is a text message.
Time Travel • Newspapers • Paint’s • Flyers • With the advance of the world industrialization, we are introduced to photography. • Photo cameras in 1810-s 20’s Telegraph – first communication technology base on electricity (waves) ——— • Phonautograph 1850’s – 60’s & Music recorded. • Telephone – 1870 – 90’s • Recording Camera & Movies – 1870 – 90’s • Radio 1910’s 30’s • Television 1940’s 60 • Satellite 1940’s 70’s • TV Broadcasting 1930’s – 60’s • Car phone – 1940’s 80’s • Video games -1960’s 1980’s • Pages 1980’s • TV Cable 1980’s • Home/Personal Computers 1980’s 90’s • Mobile phones 1980’s • Dog Microchips… According to the American Veterinary Medical Association: “The microchip itself does not have a battery—it is activated by a scanner that is passed over the area, and the radio waves put out by the scanner activate the chip. The chip transmits the identification number to the scanner, which displays the number on the screen. The microchip itself is also called a transponder.”
The social impact of these technologies can be explained by the uses & gratifications theory as an open door to understanding why one chose its media. There are people who like more reading, and more listening, and others who watch, and this reference works like a chain.
Considered an offshoot of the functionalist theory, the ‘Use and Gratification’ hypothesis states that the adoption of a model of conduct or action by an individual is the result of some gratification, which may be the relief of tensions, culinary, financial, or fashion, among others. The study on Use and Gratifications aims at the type of consumption that the public makes of mass communications.
And, to understand mass communication, it is essential to understand the social framework in which this communication is effectively inserted. In other words, in these studies, the recipients’ needs are considered as one of the variables that limit the effects of communication. The Uses and Gratifications Theory is based on three guiding principles:
• The receiver is active and seeks the means of communication and content that best meet their needs and desires.
• The reasons that lead to the choice of media and content are subject to numerous psychological, environmental, situational, and social influences.
• Exposure to the means competes with other forms potentially capable of satisfying (gratifying) the same motives.
The individual may choose to expose themselves to the media or seek forms of gratification unrelated to the media. Likewise, exposure to media is an intentional act, not a casual one. The fundamental element of the “uses and gratifications” hypothesis is to merge the consumption, use, and effects of the media with the structural characteristics that the recipients need.
Use and gratification theory was first introduced in the 1940s when academics began studying why people chose to consume various forms of media. News studies and perspectives of use and gratification theory that emphasize on individual socialization and behavior have inspired researchers to open many studies on how this theory of personality affects people’s motivation to use media overall.
If one prefers visual communication as their form of gratification, they are going to choose television. If someone is more liberal, they would prefer to watch CNN to stay informed or watch a documentary about LGBTQ history. The same could happen with someone with more conservative ideas, they still choose television, but in this case, they will be watching Fox News or Blue Bloods as a form of gratification.
Back to our time travel
• Mobile computers – 1980’s 1990’s
• Dial-up internet-based by phone line. – 1980’s
90’s
• Laptops – 1990’s
• Disquiet
• Cd-room
• 1990’s 2000’s
• Mobile phones with internet
• 2000’s
• Mobile phone camera photo SMS
• 2000’s 2010’s (Apple, Samsung, Motorolla, Nokia)
• Mobile phone with camera video – MMS
2000’s
Mobile Phone Video Calls (Facetime, Etc…)
Streaming
2010’s-2020’s (Netflix, Hiulu, Hbo, etc…)
Video Meeting – Home office/Mobile (Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Etc…)
2010’s 2020’s
With millennials getting older and the rise of Gen Z, the uses & gratifications theory gets more complex. We still have the old technologies, but now we have been introduced to new ones.
For example, on the ABC7 streaming app, one does not have to necessarily watch the 11 a.m. news edition at 11 a.m., but instead, one can watch it at a time that’s convenient, any time during the day or, even on the next day.
The last item on our communication technologies
HUMAN MICROCHIPS
According to Wikipedia:
“A human microchip implant is any electronic device implanted subcutaneously (subdermally) usually via an injection. Examples include an identifying integrated circuit RFID device encased in silicate glass which is implanted in the body of a human being. This type of subdermal implant usually contains a unique ID number that can be linked to information contained in an external database, such as identity documents, criminal records, medical histories, medications, address books, and other potential uses. “
Neuralink is Musk’s neural-interface-technology company. It’s developing a device that would be embedded in a person’s brain, where it would record brain activity and potentially stimulate it
According to the website Business Insider;
While Musk likes to talk up his futuristic vision for the technology, the tech has some potential near-term medical applications.
Musk founded Neuralink under the radar in 2016.
Neuralink first became publicly known in 2017 when The Wall Street Journal reported on its existence.
The company’s first major public outing didn’t come until 2019, when Musk and other members of the Neuralink executive team showed off their tech in a livestreamed presentation.
Musk has made lots of fanciful claims about the enhanced abilities Neuralink could confer. In 2020 Musk said people would “save and replay memories” like in “Black Mirror,” or telepathically summon their car.
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