Yes, that’s a long title, but I have so much to talk about! This week’s readings for my Evolutions and Trends in Digital Media course covered myriad subjects, but I have been able to draw out some common ideas and will assiduously attempt to tie them all together here. We students were asked to take a look at some more of Brian Winston’s book, Media, Technology, and Society, on the subject of the telephone and recorded sound, as well as Clay Christensen’s Seeing What’s Next, regarding the semiconductor, and lastly, Vannevar Bush’s prophetic 1945 treatise “As We May Think“, which rightly predicted the era of the computer. I will somehow connect these works together and bring them all back to the subject of communication in general. Wish me luck!
In chapters two and three of his book, Winston shows us how suppression of new technology via something as frivolous as patent legalities, among other things, disrupts diffusion of good technology. Christensen, in chapter seven of his book, takes a look at how technology manufacturers can actually overshoot consumers and stifle innovation through Moore’s Law (read more about Moore’s law here). And Bush’s “As We May Think” teaches us how to examine contemporary developments and find a logical path to future inventions. As technology fosters communication, the abovementioned titles are basically all about technologies that are integral to today’s communication landscape.
Now, the thread that brings the three works we are discussing together is thus: possessing a clear history of a technology and understanding what may have prevented its diffusion to the masses in the past as well as may have bolstered its success during the same period, as well as knowing precisely what major challenges to innovation the technology faces today might be, and being able to see how the past and the present provide insight to the technology’s future are all vital to understanding the development of any technology in general. Understanding these underlying developments as they have and will occur, in regards to the particular technologies we will discuss herein, helps us understand how we have gotten the tools that we use to communicate today. Thus, this helps us predict how we will communicate using technology in the future.
Winston laboriously details the back-and-forth court battles which took place between Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray regarding the invention and patenting of telephone technology in the late 1800s. Without patents properly secured, moving forward with production of any new technology becomes nearly impossible in patent law-abiding countries. Since there are so many other impediments to the successful diffusion and adoption of a technology to the masses, lawsuits are usually the last thing the path to progress needs. With global conflict, societal values, and other issues already in technology’s way, patent cases become another ‘spear to the spokes’. How would communication be affected today if it weren’t for these legal delays?
Of course, delays are not always bad. Technological spin-offs brewing from delays in technological development can be very interesting and ultimately beneficial. Winston connects the suppression of the telephone to the development of recorded sound, as natural steps toward the eventual invention of recorded sound were already stemming from telephone technology. Unfortunately, this initially brought about new diffusion impediments for the telephone – people feared that their privacy would be invaded and their calls would be recorded, as far back as the first years of the twentieth century. On the other hand, what would media communication be like today without recorded sound? Fear is another delayer of innovation.
Innovation in the world of semiconductors is rapid, but not always necessary. Clay Christensen details how Moore’s law forces the semiconductor industry, particularly major companies like Intel, to constantly push processor speed to new heights. Unfortunately, this pushing creates an overshooting affect, as powerful processors become underutilized by most consumer-grade software. Christensen posits that companies like Intel should think of new ways to develop and design chips that are more customized and are essentially function-specific, as this is what disruptive new, small, up-start competitors are doing. On the other hand, Intel must continue to push the chip speed limit, because they are the best entity to do so. Christensen says Intel should find faster ways to produce its product, too, in order to stay on top. Innovation can be a tricky game when your technology appears to be hitting a plateau.
Therefore, knowing where your technology is going in the future is important for deciding where to place your investments. Venerated scientist Vannevar Bush seemingly knew this principle, and was able to postulate on current technologies (in his day, 1945) to produce very accurate guesses, with eery precision, regarding future innovations. For example, he predicted speech recognition in computers; heck, he predicted personal computers way before their debut! He clearly examined the path of innovation the communications tools that preceded him had taken, knew the present day circumstances of audio technology for his time, and then predicted exactly what would come at some future day. And, to tie Christensen in, without state-of-the-art semiconductors like those produced by Intel, speech recognition would be much more delayed in its diffusion than it is today. (Of course, lots more call center personnel would be employed, too!)
The entire purpose of the Evolutions and Trends course is to see where we’ve been, where we are, and where we are about to go. This week’s readings perfectly produced a representation of just that, though across more loosely connected topics. It is difficult to imagine a world without telephones, semiconductors, or personal computers. The are each vastly important communication technologies, whether providing for, or directly implemented in, communicating messages today.
Author’s aside: read this snippet from Bush and tell me it doesn’t smell like he predicted the precedent for social media – the associative database of people:
Selection, in this broad sense, is a stone adze in the hands of a cabinetmaker. Yet, in a narrow sense and in other areas, something has already been done mechanically on selection. The personnel officer of a factory drops a stack of a few thousand employee cards into a selecting machine, sets a code in accordance with an established convention, and produces in a short time a list of all employees who live in Trenton and know Spanish. Even such devices are much too slow when it comes, for example, to matching a set of fingerprints with one of five millions on file. Selection devices of this sort will soon be speeded up from their present rate of reviewing data at a few hundred a minute. By the use of photocells and microfilm they will survey items at the rate of thousands a second, and will print out duplicates of those selected. (Bush, section 5, 1945)
THAT is going in my final project about online dating.
References
Bush, V. As we may think. Retrieved 2/3/2009, 2009, from http://www.w3.org/History/1945/vbush/vbush.shtml
Bush, V. As we may think – section 5. Retrieved 2/3/2009, 2009, from http://www.w3.org/History/1945/vbush/vbush5.shtml
Christensen, C. M., Anthony, S. D., & Roth, E. A. (2004). Seeing what’s next : Using the theories of innovation to predict industry change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Retrieved from WorldCat
Moore’s law – wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved 2/3/2009, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore’s_law
Winston, B. (1998). Media technology and society : A history : From the telegraph to the internet. London; New York: Routledge. Retrieved from WorldCat
You might also enjoy...
Tags: audio, communications, computers, innovation, invention, MCDM, phones, semiconductors, technology, Vannevar Bush