1: Lecture Notes

Communicating in the 21st century is utterly exhausting.

You don’t know whether to text the person you are trying to get in touch with.
- What if they don’t have credit?
Maybe you should call…
- What if their phone is on silent?
Perhaps a Facebook comment is more appropriate…
- Do they check their Facebook often enough?

Exhausting. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am addicted to technology and am eagerly awaiting my next hit.

I had never thought of communication as being split into both new and old technologies, so I decided to write down the different ways in which I was able to be contacted via both. A century ago this number would probably reach 5 at the very highest. Today? I am contactable 25 different ways:

Old
Post: Home, Work.
Phone: Home, Work.
Fax: Work.

New
Phone: Mobile, Ping, Textie.
Email: 3 x Hotmail, 2 x Work, Student, 3 x Gmail (all for uni).
Social networking: Facebook, Myspace, Twitter.
Blog: Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress.
IM: Skype, MSN.

Not surprisingly the new communication technologies far outweigh the old. 5 years ago I was only able to be contacted by 5 (home address and phone, mobile, Hotmail, MSN) of my now 25 means of contact, an increase of over 500%. Does that mean that 5 years from now this number will jump to 100?

Would I be able to survive without it all? What if I had to live 100 years ago in the year 1910? I wouldn’t have my iPod, filled with my favourite 981 albums that I could call upon dependent on my mood; I wouldn’t be able to take a photo and double check my hair looked good enough for it to go on Facebook, hell, they didn’t have Facebook back then! Or computers for that matter… How did anyone survive without it all and more importantly, how did anyone survive without Google?

When does a new technology suddenly become old? Defining the exact moment is very difficult (perhaps impossible?) and open to interpretation. A widely accepted way of categorising these technologies is to say that an old technology is analog and that new technologies are digital.

I think that a technology can transition from new to old by achieving market saturation (E.g. television) or when the original technology has evolved from its original release (E.g. telephones have evolved into mobile phones and now into smartphones). This definition is far from perfect and I can see exceptions to this rule (I.e. computers have achieved market saturation but are still considered a new technology), but it is like asking someone to define what they like about music, you are likely to get an answer along the lines of "I just like the way it sounds". Not exactly inspiring.

The convergence of technologies is an exciting thing to see, but how far is too far? I think a fridge having an internet connection is a tad ridiculous. Smartphones, however, have successfully been able to combine phone, email, radio, social networking, blogging and instant messaging services as well as camera and music playing technologies, while creating even more forms of communication with their downloadable apps (E.g. Ping and Textie).

In the spectrum of communications, if analog is represented in shades of grey and digital is more or less represented by black and white, I can’t wait to see the colours of the future's new technologies. You know how to get in contact with me to let me know when they arrive.