Hundreds year ago, the first television has been created and introduced to the public. And nowadays, with the development of modern industry, television is known and used by nearly everyone and every family. Watching TV and enjoying those TV programs have been the most common entertainment during our spare of time. How did television change from an image transfer device to such a high technology? Has the traditional television been influence by the internet? And what is the future of the television?
1972
The first electronic television was invented by Philo Taylor Farnsworth in San Francisco, who pushed the development of television from mechanical to electronic. Before this period, television was just a device that “scanning images mechanically and transmitting them through wire tables onto a screen.”(Hurt, 2017) Farnsworth tried to change the working system of the television. So he started to let the television not only just scan images but also select images. In addition, he changed the method of transition. After taking and selecting images, those images would be coded and then those codes will be transferred to various equipment and devices by radio waves (Stephens, 1999). This is the primary operating principle of the first electronic television. After the first creation of the electronic television, scientists continually worked on the improvement of devices in order to convert all original television into electronic system.
The first image that electronic television show on the screen was just a simple line, but with the improvement of radio waves and increasing numbers of TV stations, some regular programs began broadcasting (Stephens, 1999). The attention on radio moved forward to television. People started to receive moving images and video on screen instead of listening. News and other sports games started to been shown to public even though the quality of the picture is bad because of the poor camera. The appearance of television, met the needs of public that they could not only hear the sounds but also watched images of what they were listening to. Thanks to this great invention, people do not need to transfer those audio message that they have listen to to pictures. Now they can face to those pictures that they need to imagine before.
2018
With these features, television becomes more and more popular. Today, “the number of TV households in the United States in 2017-2018 was estimated at 119.6 million.”(statista,2018) And various kinds of television have been invited and introduced to the public. The appearance of television becomes bigger, lighter and thinner. Compared with the first electronic television, the image quality of the display screen makes huge progress. For example, the body of television will be transparent and made by glasses with touch screen. Furthermore, Wi-Fi television has been popularized recently, which means cable and wire system will be replaced by internet easily.
As we all know, more and more mobile devices are created, such as smartphones, iPad and computers. Traditional television has been effected a lot by those emergent devices. More and more people chose watch traditional news by their phones, even watching videos on their iPads or computers. Less and less people want to turn on television as usual. But is that means traditional television stop revolution? In my point of view, traditional television continues its revolution by adding on more features that can not be realized on those mobile devices. Firstly, the screen of the traditional television is bigger than those mobile devices, which means the quality of images and sound is better and users can be more interactive. Furthermore, watching television gives a chance to bring family and friends together to enjoy the life. Because the pressure from people themselves and the whole society, modern people need to work harder so they do not have time to join together as before. But by the revolutionary of television, people may have more chance to get together and enjoy those TV programs. The most importantly, in the future, primary television will add more functions, such as touch screen, connecting to Internet, work as a computer, and also long-distance control. This means traditional television will work as a smart technology which mix the functions of mobile devices, computers and even a small robot. So from the situation of the development of the television, we can see that even though traditional TV industry might be influenced by those emergent social media, television will still continue its revolutionary.
QQ is the most common online communication platform in China. When it first been used by public, users could only send messages to chat with each other on the computer through the internet. But now after the revolutionary of those mobile devices, such as smart phones and iPad, QQ has been used not only on the computer but also those mobile-communication-technologies. Furthermore, users can not only send messages, but start voice and video calls as well. Moreover, users can post pictures, videos or links onto Qzone to share with other users in the community, which set up a communication web with users in the same friends circle to let make friends easier than before. So here, communicative tools – smart phones and iPads push the improvement and revolution of QQ – the online-social-mobile communication technology. With the help of revolution of those mobile devices, those social media start to catch up with those technologies, so that they update their technological system to provide users better experiences.
As Michael Hauben says in his article that he hopes net is placed in the public and does not been commercialized and privatized (Hauben, 1994), the revolutionary process of television really fit with his sense. Thanks to the internet, other online-social-mobile media can be pushed to revolute to the most modern stage as today. And with the development of all those technologies, human lives are improving day by day. As a result, the whole society can move forward to the next new stage. But from the “hacker-geek” culture, we can clearly find that internet is the catalyst of not only improvement but also some social problems. Everything has double sides, as same as internet. There is no doubt that internet brings us convenient, but it also cause some serious problem, such as health problems, education problems, influencing public opinion and other social problems. And it can be found on the television as well.
From what I have mentioned above, traditional television will not be influenced by those emergent social media, mobile devices and even the internet. It still has a bright future!
Reference:
Number of TV households in the U.S. 2018 | Statistic. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/243789/number-of-tv-households-in-the-us/
Hur, J. (2017, September 06). History of the Television. Retrieved from https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-of-the-television/
Stephens, M. (1999). The History of Television. In Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (2000 ed.)
Hauben, M.(1994). What the Net Means to Me. Retrieved from
http://www.ais.org/~hauben/Michael_Hauben/Collected_Works/Amateur_Computerist/What_the_Net_Means_to_Me.txt