Priority Interrupt by Steve Ciarcia Real People

Have you ever thought about how much the evolution in communication technology affects the way you live today? Perhaps the remotest we can be from today's Information Age is going back to the days of the Greeks. Let's face it. Communication technology back then wasn't much more than determining who could yell the loudest. Their idea of "advanced technology" meant adding the mechanical acoustics of an amphitheater. Crude but effective.

Remote communication was an even more difficult task. Doing something as ordinary as trying to gather government representatives together for a meeting involved sending messengers to the far corners of the land and waiting days or even weeks for replies. When the messenger reached his destination, he personally exchanged the message in the presence of the recipient. From there, the messenger returned the response. Of course, this presumed that the messenger didn't meet with the ancient equivalent of a spam filter, where he was killed based on the recipient's opinion of the message.

The first real revolutionary advance in communication technology was the telegraph. Instead of purely mechanical enhancements, it combined ideas of electricity and mechanical signaling as a method of sending distant communications. And, although it was a first step towards modern-day communication technology, an operator still had to translate the Morse Code into written language and then hand deliver the message to the recipient.

Pre-Information Age people had a completely different view of the role of communications than we do today. When individuals communicated over long distances, they expected long delays and simply waited. No one really seemed to be in a hurry to do things. Communication was an extension of the natural use of language and not an independent tool that grants universal access and demands instant response.

Information Age society has a decidedly unique view of the world, and it has radically affected the way we interact with each other. Today, we communicate without leaving the comforts of the home and with little special effort. We can communicate with 100 people without ever seeing a face or hearing a voice. One hundred years ago, the rising sun determined the workday. And, although we might view it as a difficult existence, it was decidedly slower paced and far more interactive. Today, it's a 24/7 world where too many of us need it to be 30/7.

The Internet and other forms of enhanced communication have altered the nature of our interactions and concept of time. Today, we define time by its accomplishment-value, not just the passing of seconds. The fact that the mechanical efficiency of communicating has improved doesn't necessarily make us feel like we're accomplishing more. Despite the fact that we are indeed saving time, we continually pack our lives with more and more things to do in order to preserve this value.

We've been communicating since the first of our species could talk. How we do it affects our personal relationships and all the others around us. Advanced technology has altered our lives and our mind-set. In the future, communication technology will offer even more choices. People once had to rely on face-to-face communication, because they had no other alternative. Today, the Internet allows us to be physically remote yet totally connected to the world. At the rate we're going, it is not inconceivable that tomorrow's workplace will be completely virtual.

Although inefficient by today's standards, talking facilitates understanding between individuals and contributes to the social order. In a cyberspace-only world, we run the risk of having less socialization and many more of the misunderstandings that can result from it. Society must be wary of the isolating aspect of high-tech communication exercised to the extreme.

Before we dismiss the past as irrelevant in today's high-speed world, we have to look at what we lose along with the gains. The solution for me has been to simply walk away from the computer and talk to real people.

steve.ciarcia@circuitcellar.com

Published: February 2003