Traversing Kentucky and Tennessee in 1830, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that not “in the most enlightened rural districts of France there is intellectual movement either so rapid or on such a scale as in this wilderness” (Tocqueville & Reeve, 2013). More than 175 years before social media, the United States postal service transformed the fledgling colonies into a robust communication network. The resulting deluge of news, information, and personal correspondence fundamentally altered the nation with social, economic, and political impacts that reverberated around the globe.
Origins
Historians trace the official invention of the US Postal Service to the Postal Service Act of 1792. This law endowed Congress with authority over postal route designation (Smithsonian National Postal Museum, 2018), thereby greatly expanding the scope and status of the Post Office. It should be noted the postal service itself was not a unique invention. Other countries already had their own postal systems, poorly realized. The US also had an incomplete postal system run by local authorities. What made the new American system unique, however, was its animus as a public and federal “medium of civic communication and nation-building” (Starr, 2004, p. 88).
The Post Office performed several vital functions including expanding postal roads, delivering mail, and disseminating reading materials like newspapers, magazines, and government documents. Distributing news was especially important. Under the 1792 Act, newspapers were given special discounts and advantages. These subsidies were instrumental to the creation of a national news network (Starr, 2004, p. 90).
The Postal Service also involved technological innovations. Establishing new postal routes, delivering, and sorting the mail required new methods and tools for distribution. For instance, the early postal service employed contracted mail coaches to deliver mail, which had to be altered to cover a wide variety of climates and terrain as postal routes expanded (The Postal Museum, n.d.). As the volume of mail increased, tools like the hand-cranked canceling machine were also created to streamline delivery services (Madrigal, 2011). The success of the US Postal System prompted changes across the developed world, as other nations attempted to mimic America’s communication innovation.
Revolutionary Status: Past and Present
Evidence for the revolutionary nature of the Postal Service as a communication technology can be seen in the emergence of 19th century markets for reading material. The Postal Service’s contribution to increasing literacy rates bolstered a growing educational system and gave rise to print as a form of mass entertainment and information (Starr, 2004, p. 113). Remarkably, by 1850 “the United States had already produced a more literate population than the European average” (Starr, 2004 p. 105). Establishing new postal routes similarly supported a burgeoning market for books and magazines. Taking a broad view of its influence, the Postal Service underpinned several other essential communication developments from cheap print, to a robust newspaper market, and the rise of consumer advertising. These advances and subsequent technologies born from them had long-lasting global impacts.
In many ways, the Post Office inspired modern technologies as well. Email is an obvious example. Electronic mail services function as digital post boxes enabling users to send and receive messages across the globe. Perhaps expectedly, the volume of personal mail through the Post Office has declined (United States Postal Service, n.d.). However, the Post Office is increasingly used as a package delivery service (United States Postal Service, n.d.). While this is a promising trend, new technology platforms, like Amazon, threaten the Post Office’s role in society. Founded as an online bookstore in 1994, today Amazon is the largest Internet retailer in the world (Tyler, 2018). Although the future of the Postal Service is unknown, its influence on modern communication is undeniable.
Today the Postal Service occupies a precarious position. Despite maintaining favorability ratings of 88% (Pew Research Center, 2018), it has lost billions in revenues since 2006 (Kosar, 2018). Political attacks and calls for privatization further increase these tensions. It retains its revolutionary status, but in a more modest sense. The Post Office still attempts to modernize its service with the incorporation of technology like optical scanners, robots, and digital tracking systems (United States Postal Service, n.d.a).
The Revolutionary Nature of Emergent Online-Social-Mobile Communication Technologies
The emergence of new online-social-mobile communication technologies has occurred at a blistering pace. Innovations like live-streaming, virtual reality, and wearable networked devices demonstrate the variety of such advancements. However, determining the extent to which these developments are truly revolutionary requires an analytical lens. Rainie and Wellman (2012) offer one such framework. They conceive of systems like social networks, the Internet, and mobile technologies as revolutions for the ways in which they afford diversity in relationships, enhance relationship maintenance tools, empower information gathering capacities while promoting the ability to self-publish and create less reliance on physical and temporal constraints (pp. 11-12). This is a humanistic approach that underlines the importance of individual and group empowerment through social technologies. This understanding provides support for the argument that the US Postal System was, indeed, a communication revolution.
The concept of networked individualism is essential to evaluating the potential of any emergent technology as revolutionary. Broadly, this idea describes the shift from hierarchal, in-person, and formal social relationships to more diffuse ones characterized by technology and personal autonomy (Rainie and Wellman, 2012). From this perspective, wearable networked devices could be revolutionary if they increase agency, facilitate group building, and create social community spaces (p. 35). Revolutionary status is additionally determined by cumulative advantages where “the more connections you have, the more you get” (Rainie and Wellman, 2012, p. 48). This has implications both for users of wearable technology and the companies creating these products.
Social movements and eras are often identified by their anachronistic communication technologies. For instance, the Arab Spring uprising and Black Live Matter movement are both associated with the use of social media. However, this reductive assessment risks undermining the complex interplay of technological, social, political, historical, and economic pressures that shape moments of social unrest. Instead, a constitutive approach, accounting for these competing forces, would better highlight technology’s role during pivotal social moments. Such an approach should include examining the role of economic interests at the heart of the technologies facilitating social change. As Smyrnaois argues, the current state of the Internet “results from the complex relationships between actors whose economic and political interests are both powerful and antagonistic” (2018, p. 4).
Far from becoming an equalizing force for democratic participation and access to information as extolled Hauben (1994), the Internet and related communication technologies have organized around commercial interests. On one hand this strategy resulted in significant growth of the global economy and placed America at the forefront of communication innovation. On the other hand, corporate pursuit of profit and lack of meaningful oversight resulted in societal grievances like widespread surveillance. While the Internet may have been founded on 1970s countercultural principles of community, freedom, and empowerment, these ideals have been co-opted and subjugated by corporate interests. This is the “commodification of cyberculture” (Smyrnaois, 2018, p. 24).
Where does this leave the Post Office in modern times? Will it ever play a transformative role in the way that it did in the 1800s? Probably not, but its vision of democracy and commerce remains.
Works Cited
Hauben, M. (1994). What the Net Means to Me. Amateur Computerist, 6(1). Retrieved from http://www.ais.org/~hauben/Michael_Hauben/Collected_Works/Amateur_Computerist/What_the_Net_Means_to_Me.txt
Kosar, K. (2018, January, 12). There’s more than one reason the Postal Service is losing money. The Hill. Retrieved from http://thehill.com/opinion/finance/368753-theres-more-than-one-reason-the-postal-service-is-losing-money
Madrigal, A. C. (2011, December 14). Tech Has Saved the Postal Service for 200 Years—Today, It Won’t. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/tech-has-saved-the-postal-service-for-200-years-today-it-wont/249946/#slide7
Pew Research Center. (2018, February 14). Majorities Express Favorable Opinions of Several Federal Agencies, Including the FBI. Pew Research Center. Retrieved fromhttp://www.people-press.org/2018/02/14/majorities-express-favorable-opinions-of-several-federal-agencies-including-the-fbi/
Rainie, L., & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The new social operating system. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Smithsonian National Postal Museum. (2018). 1792 Postal Act. Retrieved from https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/current/binding-the-nation/starting-the-system/1792-postal-act.html
Smyrnaios, N. (2018). Internet Oligopoly: The Corporate Takeover of our Digital World. Bingley, United Kingdom: Emerald Publishing.
Starr, P. (2004). The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications. New York, New York: Basic Books.
The Postal Museum. (n.d.). Mail coaches. Retrieved from https://www.postalmuseum.org/discover/collections/mail-coaches/
The United States Postal Service. (n.d.). A decade of facts and figures. Retrieved from https://facts.usps.com/table-facts/
The United States Postal Service. (n.d.a). Innovation in the mail. Retrieved from https://facts.usps.com/innovation/
Tocqueville, A. D., & Reeve, H. (2013). Democracy in America: Volumes I and II combined. Tunbridge Wells, England: Solis Press.
Tyler, J. (2018, April 19). These are the biggest online shopping destinations in America. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-online-shopping-sites-list-2018-4#3-walmartcom-8