Originally written in January 2010 for a graduate class at Quinnipiac University.
Willy Wonka’s Veruca Salt pretty much sums up the state of interactive communication as it relates to today, “Don’t care how. I WANT IT NOW!” There has always been a desire to increase interactive communication, and need has been the factor that has both halted the progress and helped society get to where it is today: instant messaging, email, text messaging. What can we not get instantly? That very need to make communication more spread has helped develop interactive communication to the levels that we have currently achieved, but although its role is versatile, it is at times costly to the very society in which it was created.
Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, etc., etc. Interactive communication helps today’s society function quickly, efficiently. Interactive communication is due in large part to the advancement of technology and the rate at which we can instantaneously interact with one another. That very technology is replacing face-to-face communication and interaction. The trend today is the need for computers in the workplace, but these very computers are taking jobs away and forcing people to interact through technology, which lessens personal interaction. We have what we have asked for, but at a cost; the shift is moving from need to want. Don’t care how. I WANT IT NOW!
SHOW ME THE MONEY
As history has shown, there has to be a need in order to achieve. Gottfried Leibniz was ahead of his time in creating a calculating machine. What was one of the reasons progress was stopped? Funds. Charles Babbage worked on creating an arithmetical machine. What stopped its further development? Costs (Bush 2). These great inventors proved to be ahead of the interactive revolution with the potential to advance the record. The record is an important part of interactive communication. It is just one account that “involves the entire process by which man profits by his inheritance of acquired knowledge,” (6). To create a record has proven to be vital in the advancement of society especially as it relates to being a creative society. However, there was not a need for the aforementioned inventions because most people were farmers at the time. Hence, these machines never came to fruition, as was the fate of many devices. The costs outweighed any need.
Some inventions were worth the money. Claude Chappe’s semaphore system was utilized for a time. There was a need to relay war messages through distances, so the initiative was given support to address the need. But there always seems to be another way that is less expensive and more cost effective. So although, Chappe’s method worked, the electric telegraph worked better (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Chappe).
The “I WANT IT NOW!” generation does not stray from need. As demonstrated by Dr. Douglas Engelbart’s Demo (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8734787622017763097), the computer back in 1968 was shown to be a device that was going to prove vital to our future needs. As we see presently, they were right.
MY FIRST TIME
My first introduction to a computer came more than two decades after the Engelbart demonstration. I used to go to my mother’s work during the summer. She was a secretary at a school. In the back office, there was an Apple computer. I did not use it for anything useful. I do not remember it even having a mouse, even though Engelbart had one during his demonstration. I remember the huge, floppy disk. I did not write using the computer, but rather remember playing Jeopardy on it. I did not use the computer back then as a necessity.
Ten years later, when I was in college, I did use the computer for my needs. I wrote my research papers, and life was made a heck of a lot easier for it. Of course, I used the computer then to also instant message classmates, hometown friends, and even my own roommates sitting up in the loft. The move from less interpersonal communication to more interactive communication can be seen here.
Let us advance ten more years. I now use the computer solely at work, for one, to do my work. I edit on a laptop out in the field. I can even get file video off of our server from my laptop out in the field, and I can even send back video that will air on television just through my laptop. I do not ever need to step foot inside the station’s building, which brings me back to the point that interpersonal communication is dying slowly due to computers and the more interactive society we choose to communicate in. We want things NOW!
IT CAN SAVE LIVES
The NOW! part of interactive communication can be great and there is a need for it. Lets use the recent earthquake that occurred in Haiti as an example. Using the very same blog that we are using for this class, Wyclef Jean created a blog (http://wyclefjean.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/statement-by-wyclef-jean-on-haiti-earthquake/) and sought funds to aid his fellow Haitians during this disaster. On the site, you can send texts to give donations. He used his twitter account to further seek aid by asking millions to get involved (http://twitter.com/wyclef). Yes, there is a need, in instances like this, for the computer and the genius it seeks to offer in interactive communities.
THAT WILL BE…$5!
Engelbart and J.C.R. Licklider were pioneers of their time, like Leibniz and Chappe, that saw the greater picture of the importance of interactive communication as it relates to the computer. As Licklider predicts in 1990, “in a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face,” (Licklider 21), as has been proven. But in modern day, where the technology revolution expands daily, the need that has always been there has become redefined due to computers. Although communication is more effective, it is changing millions of lives for the worse. Computers are replacing jobs that a person holds. The greatness that has enabled us to communicate internationally, respond instantaneously, create a world in which we can get knowledge at any time, is affecting our society not in regard to the advancement of technology, but in the lives that utilize this technology to survive.
Licklider also predicted “Unemployment would disappear from the face of the earth forever, for consider the magnitude of the task of adapting the network’s software to all the new generations of computer, coming closer and closer upon the heels of their predecessors until the entire population of the world is caught up in an infinite crescendo of on-line interactive debugging,” (40). All that has come. And it has also gone. What now? We wanted everything NOW! We have it, but at a great cost.
A computer has yet to achieve the complexity of the human brain, but humans think repetitiously, and THAT a computer can replace and has. It was predicted in 1945 that “the world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come to it” (Bush 2). We have seen jobs being affected today, and so are the personal relationships we hold with one another.
Our lives our easier. We are a creative society. We want to increase our knowledge, become more interactive and as a result we are losing interpersonal communication and replacing it with interactive communication via technological devices.
I rarely see my boss at work. I text him. I call him. I email him to address all my needs. He even stated, during my interview, that on my schedule, I would never see him at work, even though we have a three-hour shift crossover. Though we never see one another, we communicate and interact technologically to address issues regularly.
My company provides cell phones and email accounts, because there is a need for many of us to interact and communicate via those devices. Interactive communication and its various tools are vital to the lines of communication, not only where I work, but in many, if not most, companies. It speeds up the communication process, but I do not know on a personal level any of the five hundred people that work for the same company that I do. I do not know them by name. I do not know them by face. I just do not know them. There is neither a need for me to ever be in the building, nor am I ever allotted time to be in the building. I work out in the field, with my laptop, with my phone, and a handful of coworkers I see daily. I have lost that interpersonal communication, because it has been replaced with interactive communication. It is not by my choice, but circumstances that I have no control over.
A great example of this situation involves a new producer we just hired. I found out that she actually just came from the market I left before coming to Connecticut. I have talked to her on the phone to relay important messages, like “you do not have a live shot, because the reporter is not ready.” I have never talked to her face-to-face. How do I establish a rapport when I have never met her in person? If you do not have a personal level of communication, then interactive communication to an extent is useless. I could never use Skype or Facebook to make friends with her. Not that I want to, but lack of interpersonal communication breeds no interactive communication with exceptions of the technological devices that our work has provided us. Maybe it is just me that functions this way?
I love interactive communication. It will save me money. I will be using Skype during the week to not go over my minutes on my cellphone.. Interactive communication will be the saving grace for my graduate work. But, I blame interactive communication for not allowing me to have as many friends in my social networks. I think all these technological devices are the culprit to the massive layoffs in my field and in many work forces. AT&T has laid off hundreds, because landline use is down.
From Veruca Salt in 1971 to the Black Eyed Peas in 2009, there has always been a now generation mentality. The BEP’s “Now Generation” sums up where our society is today. Take a listen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zf4MIBSnGc). We have become this NOW! generation; we do not define need as previous generations before the advent of the technology revolution. We have redefined it to our advantage, but at a cost that cannot be measured monetarily. The contrary can be said of those before us. Money was associated with need. If a need was not there, a project was not funded. It did not cost society, for they knew not what lay ahead. Today, we know it is costing us interpersonal communication and at times our jobs.
Today’s society is headed in a new, unknown direction. We are in a recession that has yet to end, it probably will not for some time. I am anticipating some interactive communication device will be able fix this problem, only if it is a need for the NOW! generation of course.
SIDENOTE: After writing this, it appears that I have a very pessimistic view on interactive communication. Quite ironic for someone that is choosing to study the field. I always say, “I am not an optimist. I am not a pessimist. I am a realist.”
WORKS CITED:
Bush, V. “As We May Think.” Theatlantic.com. July 1945.
Licklider, J.C.R. and Robert W. Taylor. “The Computer as a Communication Device.” Science and Tecnhology, April 1968.
Claude Chappe. Wikipedia.org.
