Telephone shaped people’s communication systems during wars and their everyday lives. Five decades later, another influential medium was born. As a modern counterpart to the telephone, Facebook changed the way businesses advertised, reshaped people’s news consumption habits, and influenced how people communicated with their families and friends. The well-known Canadian professor of English and philosopher, Marshall McLuhan, stated, “The ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale, or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs” (McLuhan, 1964, p. 10). Hence, the telephone and Facebook are both “make happen” agents but have introduced changes of scale, pace, and pattern into human affairs different ways.
The telegraph was an established medium of communication for nearly three decades before scientists innovated the telephone in the 19th century. Some of its drawbacks were the inability to transmit sound over long distances, the quality of the sound, and the limited transmission media. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone with the intention of solving all the restrictions associated with the telegraph in 1876 (Kang, 2017). However, initially, only the rich and businesses employed it due to the high costs of the connection materials. It was not until the early 20th century that ordinary Americans had telephones in their households. By the 1950s, approximately 68% of housing units in the United States had telephones compared to only 37% in the 1940s (Statista Telecommunications, 2018).
Despite the controversy regarding the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T)’s monopolistic operation, the telephone made various things happen that would have been nearly impossible to imagine in the prior printing era. The ability to hear “voice transmission through a device changed people’s notions of time and space” (Trowbridge, 2014), which was revolutionary.
There is no doubt that the telephone brought people closer during the war. In 1934, an intercontinental telephone milestone “included the first call from the US to Tokyo” (Telegraph, 2017). During World War Two, the telephone made it possible for those in military camps to make long-distance calls home (Chase, n.d.). The telephone was the medium that brought the families of the military comfort and relief, showing them that their relatives were alive and safe. The ability to hear loved ones’ voices when they were away took communication to a different level.
Unlike people in the previous electronic era, those in the digital era can have significant impacts through such media as Facebook. The “like” and “comment” features on Facebook offer businesses the opportunity to get customers’ feedback conveniently. The two-way communication platform enables customers to view others’ thoughts regarding issues and speeds up the information-exchange process. Personal users can connect with their families and friends on Facebook instantaneously, anywhere, and at any time. There is no sense of restriction regarding how they get in touch. Furthermore, despite sometimes questionable authenticity of the news posted on Facebook, a large number of Facebook users consume their news on the platform. In reference to the year 2016, Pew Research stated, “Two-thirds of Facebook users who get news there, then, amount to 44% of the general population” (Gottfried &Shearer, 2016).
The telephone provided limited information because people had to imagine the other party’s facial expressions and physical images. However, unlike in the printing era, where writing divided people into different categories, mediums like telephone in the electronic era brought “people back together in a tribal unity” (Wolf, 1965). In the digital era, everything has become coherent as one can read a status post on Facebook and write a comment at the same time. However, Facebook is also a cold medium because the audience has to actively contribute content. One of the major effects of Faceook is that people have more control over content. As a consequence, their vision has become limited. They solely get exposed to the content that is relevant and interesting to them. In addition, people have the ability to connect with their families and friends and the option to talk to them using various formats on Facebook. Consequently, they are always virtually “connected” and may distance themselves from their relationships with their loved ones offline.
As Stephen Marche argued in his article, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely,” in The Atlantic, social media platforms like Facebook “have made us more densely networked than we were in all the previous eras. However, we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic)” (Marche, 2012). The social consequences of massive connection with other virtual settings may be anxiety and distance from our loved ones. So I think the developers of online-social-mobile media in the contemporary stage need to not focused solely on the “hacker-geek” cultures with more innovative technologies, but to think more about the core values of human communication. The more we engage with these technologies, the harder it is to become self-aware regarding our behavior, especially our habits. Technology is bound to continue improving, perhaps infinitely. However, we must remain conscious about what truly matters.
REFERENCES
Chase, R. (n.d.). The Telephone Goes To War, 1930 – 1950. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from http://www.angelo.edu/services/library/wtcoll/verizon/pages/Timeline/tel_war/tel_war.php
Gottfried, J., & Shearer, E. (2016, May 26). News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016. Retrieved February 24, 2018, from http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/
Kang, D. (2017). The Impact of the Telephone on Society. Retrieved February 19, 2018, from http://courses.educ.ubc.ca/etec540/Sept04/kangd/Researchproject/inventionoftelephone.htm
Marche, S. (2012, May). Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? Retrieved February 24, 2018, from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/308930/
McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media (p.10). London: Sphere Books.
Statista Telecommunications (2018). Percentage of U.S. housing units with telephones 1920-2008. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2018, from
Telegraph. (2017). When the first public transatlantic phone service came into operation. Retrieved February 20, 2018, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/connecting-britain/first-public-transatlantic-phone-service/
Trowbridge, A. (2014, December 16). Evolution of the phone: From the first call to the next frontier. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/evolution-of-the-phone-from-the-first-call-to-the-next-frontier/
Wolfe, T. (1965). What if He is Right? The New York Herald Tribune.