Hello, I Must Be Going: Why Improve Communication Technology? :: essays research papers

The interesting thing about the Internet is how it allows us to communicate. The problem with the Internet is how it allows us to communicate. Bear with me. The telephone. Look at a phone, there’ll be a phone quite close to you right now, so just sit and look at it. Admire its simplicity of design, and with that think what you can do with it. By just pressing the correct combination of numbers on this device you can talk to anybody, anywhere. Hell, forget correct, just bash them and see who you get. Isn’t it incredible? When you appreciate it without all you take for granted, for how people might complain and bitch about how they don’t get enough MTV channels that show the same videos, if you can just consider the phone for what it really is†¦ how monumental its ability, how pivotal it is to the world today – the blood veins of the changing earth. Its pretty god damn impressive. And as for mobile phones†¦well. Getting back to the Internet, I’m talking about communicating via computers. Now the Internet is a fine example of how mans efficiency improves a previous invention, like the new Gameboys requiring only two AAA batteries to run, while the first ones needed four AA’s. It’s a geeky analogy, but it decorates the point: using the same technologies as phones, we can now do a hell of a lot more with them. Now we’re well above surpassing the Shannon limit (maximum Kbps through a standard phone line) and new digital technologies allow us to send more, faster. Soon we’ll have optical connections, and then some. E-mail, now I like that. Instant letters, appearing in inboxes faster than it took you to write them. Again, bettering old technology, to use the hideous yet accurate term snail-mail. Royal Mail have just been running ads in Britain – ‘nothing gets through like a letter’. Now there’s a certain truth about that, as the advert states: â€Å"After all, you can’t re-read a phone call.† While that is true, you can re-read an e-mail. You can also print it. However I believe that, although the advert didn’t mention it – there’s something much more personal about a letter, it requires a little more effort to write and send. However I also believe that more people are finding it much harder to summon that effort, considering how much easier it is to e-mail.