Outline #1

CH 1: Following the Historical Paths of Global Communication

Geographical Space: A Barrier to Communication

- Physical space is not longer an impossible obstacle to human interaction in international communication.
- Communication has evolved over the years; the broader concept of communication is relatively new.
- Communication history involves questions of how technologies arise from complex social conditions and, transform in human interaction.
- With faster and more far-reaching communication, important social and political developments occurred at the margins of technology and ideology, each interacting and expanding the potential outcomes of the other.
- Technologies are cultural metaphors for prevailing social and cultural conditions.
- Communication strategies and devices of many varieties were used to gain advantage in warfare and trade.
- The printing press and telegraph challenged the barriers of space and time, redefining individual identity and shrinking the world outside.

Geography and the Mythical World

- Travel in most of the historical pas was dangerous and unpractical.
- The vast world beyond one’s immediate reach was grasped thorough magical or metaphysical images.
- Foreign lands were believed to be the bizarre and frightening places.
- The product of fear and imagination, these mythical ideas among ancient cultures were richly symbolic and were accompanies by expression in art, science, language, and ritual.

Ancient Encounters of Societies and Cultures

- The accumulation of knowledge on papyrus rolls in the renowned library of Alexandria, was a momentous achievement but one soon lost because of the fragility of papyrus and the political upheavals that swept across the region.

Global Explorers: Migrants, Holy People, Merchants

- Except for trade caravans and emissaries on state business with armed escorts, travel was always considered hazardous and difficult.
- By the 9th century, Arab ships made regular trips from the Persian Gulf to China.
- The disappearance of Greek scholarship on geography left Europeans without many clues about the outside world.
- Among the known records of Jewish travelers are written accounts of the trade paths followed into the farthest reaches of the known world.

Mapmakers in the Medieval World

- Mapmaking was an integral part of communication history. Maps were widely considered to be valuable keys to unlocking unknown worlds.
- Maps were closely guarded by European royalty and considered to be state secrets.
- The information on most ancient maps reflected the mapmaker’s cultural and religious orientations, and much of the information was estimated, distorted, or just plain wrong.
- Maps served many purposes in ancient times, including maritime navigation, religious pilgrimages, and military and administrative uses.
- Because maps were an intellectual tool; travelers and military leaders probably seldom had access to them or practical reasons to use them.

Inventors: Signals and Semaphores

- The chronology of innovations can be atomized to discrete events, or viewed from evidence of cultural continuities.
- The Greeks attempted to develop a more elaborate torch signal system based on letters of the alphabet, but it proved to be too burdensome for practical use.
- Roman rulers adapted a type of heliograph, or visual signal system using reflected sunlight.
- In-transit message systems employed couriers both on foot and on horse.
- Romans: courier and message systems, using the highway system for moving troops commerce, and communications.
- Messages were conveyed on papyrus, parchment, and wax tablets.
- Reliability and speed of delivery through the medieval postal systems were remarkably good.
- Mongols in the 13th century dispatched everything from diplomatic messages to fruits from surrounding regions.
- The Mongol ruler Genghis Khan used pigeons in the 12th century for communication in his kingdom, which covered a vast area.
- Devices such as trumpets, drums, and even ordinary people’s shouting were used by many different cultures to extend the reach of physical sounds.
- Other communication innovations that were developed involved tapping codes on metal tubes with a hammer or blowing into cylinders to produce sounds.
- The magnetic compass was introduced to Europe form China at the end of the 12th century.
- Experiments succeeded in transmitting a cryptographic code using a crude system of magnetic compass needles, leading to eventual development of the electric telegraph.
- Then the subsequent development of the telescope in 1608 by Dutch spectacle maker Hans Lippersley extended the range of observers.
- German professor Johann Bergstrasser constructed an optical telegraph line that connected several cities.

The Printing Press, Literacy, and the Knowledge Explosion

Clerics

- Were among the few literate people engaged in any task requiring writing.
- In additions to their religious duties, they drafted legal documents and letters for official dispatches.
- On occasions when written communication for diplomacy or commerce was necessary, the preferred means was through epistles (letters).

- Literacy for the common public required easy access to printed matter and the means to transport and circulate it widely; thus, a printing press and a postal service were prerequisites.

- The complexity and diversity of the intellectual and cultural life created a marketplace ripe for information, stimulation the spread of literacy in Europe after the development of the printing press.

- The social consequences of the printing press were far-reaching, eventually encouraging the practice of reading among common people and the reformation of medieval European institutions, religions, and governments.

- The world of printing was notorious for its piracy, incivility, plagiarism, unauthorized copying, false attributions, sedition, and errors.

- Books and other printed material eventually sparked social and political changes that gave rise to popular political consciousness and “public opinion”.

- New literacy introduced new kinds of social relationships and networks among both learned and common people.

- The postal service was an innovation patterned after older courier and messenger systems.

- Letters and other correspondence were available at a cost accessible to a growing middle class, opening a market for pamphlets and newspapers.

Scientists and International Networks

- Technological innovations in travel and the changing role of international science in the mid-19th century brought far-reaching changes in relations between nations.
- Introduction of the first user-friendly electric telegraph in 1844 was a breakthrough in the longstanding dilemma over development of two-way information exchange.
- It also marked a shift between transportation and ritual modes of communication and permitted the dissemination of strategic information over great distances.
- The electric telegraph was soon followed by the telephone and wireless radio.
- Beginning with the railroad and the telegraph, towns and cities were brought closer together within a nation, regardless of whether participants were reluctant or enthusiastic to embrace these changes.
- Because of strategic importance of communication for military and diplomatic purposes, communication between nations was regarded in most 19th-century political circles as strategic and proprietary.
- International agreements were being drafted to regulate postal and telegraph traffic.
- One of the earliest significant steps toward globalizing the world was adoption of a global time system.

The International Electric Revolution

- Steam power led to what had once seemed to be startling speeds of travel, first by steamboat and the by railroad.
- The railroad and telegraph systems were important in establishing international corporate empires that successfully brought technological innovations, linking the telegraph to the railway systems in England in 1839.
- The transatlantic line eventually became a landmark step in bringing nations together in an international communication network.
- Supporters of the project were primarily motivated by their desire to reduce the time required for news to travel from Europe to America by as much as 48 hours.
- Alexander Graham Bell, stumbled across the electrical signaling process used by the telephone in his effort to improve the telegraph; he wanted a system to send several simultaneous messages over a single wire without interference.
- The telephone was a communication innovation that was adopted and managed differently in each nation.
- Thomas Edison and others developed the elemental ideas for wireless transmissions.
- The first coded trans-Atlantic radio signal was received in 1901.
- Lee De Forest made significant advancement in the clarity of sound with his triode vacuum tube, making the transmission of sound – voice and music – possible (radio).
- Others who devised new technologies for communication also saw hope in the new information machines for ushering in an age of more authentic connections in society.
Summary: Global Immediacy and Transparency

- Communication across great distance has been a catalyst for many changes in human relationships.
- Through a variety of mediated technologies, the cumulative effect of these changes was a redefinition of space and time, and increasing immediacy and transparency in global connections.
- Communication is implicated in the sweeping social and political informationscape, including the shifting relations between capital and labor and the continuing struggle over old metaphysical symbols and obstacles.
- The emergence of global communication imposes new frames of meaning about the winding path of historical change.