| The history of the world, from one angle, is the | | | | know how it all works. You couldn't work at a |
| ongoing story of how it's gotten smaller and | | | | time-sharing terminal in the late 1960s with |
| smaller in terms of travel and communication. As | | | | programming knowledge. In the 2000s, |
| recently as the early 1800s, all travel and | | | | five-year-olds were using PCs and browsing the |
| communication was the same thing - in other | | | | Internet. The science gave birth to commodities, |
| words, with the exception of the rare | | | | like today's $10 cell phones and $199 wireless |
| message-carrying pigeon, people had to take | | | | computers. Talk really is cheap! |
| communications (letters, decrees, etc.) to their | | | | Returning to the shrinking world metaphor, we |
| destinations the same way they got there, | | | | might as well say - with today's faxes, Web sites, |
| whether by boat between nations or across the | | | | iPhones and all the rest - that communications |
| U.S. on horses and wagons. In the mid-1800s, this | | | | capabilities are nearly limitless. They are definitely |
| started to change. | | | | instantaneous. Nothing brings people so close as to |
| The railroads and the new telegraph technology | | | | send text messages in real time, or share a video |
| matured at approximately the same time, with | | | | chat over the Internet, or be connected to the |
| the railroads providing a coast-to-coast route | | | | technology wherever they are and with a variety |
| starting in the middle of the century. As they | | | | of devices - phones, netbooks, laptops, iPods, fax |
| went back and forth, the railroads carried the | | | | machines, etc. Even technology from several |
| telegraph company workers that would place | | | | decades past, like the fax, has a comfortable |
| poles and string wire for intercontinental | | | | spot in today's communications toolbox, with their |
| communication of the first kind. The telegraph | | | | low prices, ease of operation and ability to |
| was as dramatic a development in its time as the | | | | replicate a document for a distant viewer in what |
| later telephone, television and computer. It | | | | is still the fastest way. |
| reduced the time for news to get from New | | | | What's next? |
| York to San Francisco from weeks to mere | | | | The talk is now about virtual reality (VR) in |
| moments. This, in fact, changed everything. | | | | communications, which in one version of the near |
| Communications advantages | | | | future has us looking at holographic friends |
| The advantages of instant communications are | | | | standing on our desktops (scaled down, hopefully!). |
| inestimable, and the role that the telegraph and | | | | Any number of companies are working on this |
| later developments played in the 19th and 20th | | | | right now. The introduction of this technology, or |
| century growth of the U.S. was so huge as to be | | | | whatever will take its place, will happen the same |
| incalculable. Without communications that were | | | | way all the other advances have occurred - a |
| swift and certain, this nation would never have | | | | first rollout that's expensive, followed by |
| grown the way it did. A hundred years after the | | | | everyone jumping on the winning bandwagon and |
| railroads joined the coasts and the telegraph | | | | competing to make the best and most affordable |
| made communications almost instantaneous, the | | | | HoloPhone. |
| mid-1900s were awash in advances and inventions | | | | The advantages of the "smaller world through |
| that were once again revolutionizing | | | | instant communications" should be evident to all. |
| communication, like fax machines, live and | | | | Greater efficiency means more work getting |
| recorded camera imagery and satellites. | | | | done by more people, and without restrictions |
| The phone was everywhere. Television had | | | | based on geography or location. The ability to |
| grown from a novelty to a necessity in just 15 | | | | bring together teams from around the world to |
| years, and now, in the postwar 1950s, scientists | | | | work together, even in real-time on a shared |
| were making huge advances in "computing | | | | document, has changed the whole notion of |
| machines" and communications between and | | | | teamwork. It has also helped create a world that |
| among them. By the 1970s, computations that | | | | even now has German cars being built in Alabama |
| used to take room-sized monstrosities were being | | | | and American iPods being made in China. |
| solved by devices that fit on a desktop. Through | | | | Without the limitations of travel and distance, |
| the 1980s and 1990s, computer technology kept | | | | people have more time to collaborate with more |
| advancing, while communications technology also | | | | people, and in more ways. The range of |
| "went digital." | | | | technologies - from old standbys like fax |
| Always on | | | | machines to the latest 3D imaging - is amazing, |
| Today, many people who take advantage of the | | | | and what remains to be seen are how they will |
| instant communications offered by fax machines, | | | | usher in not just a new era and further reduced |
| e-mail, web-based faxing and texting, | | | | world, but lead to even greater advances that |
| videoconferencing and the rest, do not even | | | | knit people together ever more tightly. |