At some point in the last decade, cellular networks became plain and ordinary. We now take for granted that our mobile phones can connect to the Internet anywhere, anytime. Yet the cellular revolution is less than 20 years old, and the entire history of “mobile radio” is barely 100 years old. It first started out with radio technologies, which freed our communications from the constraint of a wire. Analog (voice) transmission was used as early as 1905, but early work was driven primarily by military applications. Motorola with its SCR-300 helps picture a typical imagery of signaller in armed forces during World War II.
Though radio technology has been around since the start of the 19th century, using radio to transmit data other than analog voice is not achieved until recent 20 or so years. In 1982, Europe made the first move on researching telecommunication standards by establishing the Global Systems for Mobile communications (GSM) to face the world. It uses digital modulation to improve voice quality but the network offers limited data service. The US later came up with the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) to counter the European domination in the field. Then comes 3G. One of the main objectives behind 3G was to standardize on a single global network protocol instead of the different standards adopted previously in Europe, the U.S. and other regions. But what really made 3G popular is another revolution – smartphones. 3G’s broader bandwidth and higher speed allowed mobile telephone customers to use audio, graphics and video applications. Over 3G it is possible to watch streaming video and engage in video telephony, although such activities are severely constrained by network bottlenecks and over-usage. The need for high speed Internet on the go has pulled 3G to a new level and eventually to a higher speed 4G era, which is where we are at now.
We have to say, the cellular network, now in its 4th generation, is still revolutionary. 4G has been developed with the aim of providing transmission rates up to 20 Mbps. With speed like this, it can include high-performance streaming of multimedia content, improve video conferencing functionality and deliver wider bandwidth to vehicles and devices moving at high speeds within the network area. Simply put, it’s just high-speed Internet anytime anywhere. What it means to us, however, is huge. The mobile phone perpetually connects us with other people while smartphones with cellular networks connects us perpetually with the world. We cannot imagine our lives without 4G like we cannot imagine our lives without Wi-Fi. Our perspectives would surely be different knowing we are just one touch away from the world at any time at any place.
And now equipped with this kind of connecting power, we’ve entered a more networked era of social media. We used to have connections, too. How is it different this time? We connect to more people. With social-mobile-networks, the ability to connect to people has gone up while the cost has gone done. We can connect to friends’ friends or friends’ friends’ friend without knowing their phone number which is not possible with just telephones. In the past, we connect more directly, but today, we connect within a network. A network of people, and also a network of devices.
Wearables have become yet another major hit in this mobile networked era. Wearable devices such as iWatch, Fitbit have the potential to be revolutionary. They are mobile to begin with. The whole point of wearables is that we can wear them to any place at any time. And what they have against smartphones is that they can free our hands. We don’t have to hold it because we are wearing it. This could potentially mean a lot more multitasking. Another advantage of them against smartphones is that they may have functions that phones don’t. With different types of monitors built-in, they can allow us to pay more attention to the well-being. They are networked, after all, so I don’t see a reason why wearables won’t fit in our new era of networked society.
Identify eras by the communication tools. I don’t see why not. The human history is a history of communication. We are social animals so it is our primal instinct to connect to others. We have used sign, language, pen and paper, telegraph, telephone, radio, television, computer, the Internet and now social-mobile-networks. We develop new communication technology to our needs as we develop as human. And with each development of technology, we change our way of communicating or even way of thinking and looking at things.
To an individual, this new era of social-mobile-network means that he or she can be heard and can hear from other individuals more easily despite time and location factors. Everyone can share their thinking on the social network and everyone can listen to others’ thinking. But anonymity and privacy will always be there as problems. The hacker-geek culture that has boosted the formation of modern Internet eras is set to be cast away in the future. The nowadays network, which is real name based, is way less anonymous since we are on so many social networks. Everybody can know something about who everybody is. The networks have really changed in the past 50 years or so. We used to connect directly to someone close enough that we know his or her number. Then suddenly we could connect to complete strangers on the Internet. Now even we could still do those things, we tend to connect to our friends using the Internet. That is the notion of network changing in our perception. Soon, it will expand to the network of things where not only everyone but also everything connects with you and your mobile phone with the help of mobile networks and wearables.
By Zhenghao Pan, BU Emerging Media Studies Graduate Student, zhpan@bu.edu
References:
Dunnewijk, T., & Hultén, S. (2007). A brief history of mobile communication in Europe. Telematics and Informatics, 24(3), 164-179.
George Calhoun, Digital Cellular Radio, Artech House, Inc., 1988, pp. 25-26
Hauben, M. (1994). What the net means to me. Amateur Computerist Newsletter, 6(1).
Jefe Nubarrón, Evolution Of Mobile Technology: A Brief History of 1G, 2G, 3G and 4G Mobile Phones, 2011. http://www.brighthub.com/mobile/emerging-platforms/articles/30965.aspx
Katz, J. E., & Aakhus, M. (Eds.). (2002). Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance. Cambridge University Press.
Timeline of communication technology Retrieved Nov 13, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_communication_technology