Communication Advances

As a species the vast majority of us are compelled to communicate with other members, both within our family unit and without. The very first humans would have used hand signals and maybe grunts (much as chimpanzees do now) which would have been followed by the evolution of language, which was probably the single biggest technical advancement in the field.

This would have been followed over 5000 years ago by the invention of writing, which for the first time allowed knowledge to be recorded. No doubt this would have quickly led to the invention of some form of postal service so that communications could be relayed across vast distances without relying on a messengers memory. Then came the invention of paper which would have made the carrying of these messages a lot easier and allowed for more information to be carried in any one trip, there's no doubt lugging stone tablets around would have severly limited how much and how far that data could be carried.

Other forms of long distance communication were also invented, from smoke signals to beacon fires and the ringing of bells to warn of invasion. Eventually, the need to communicate over distance led to the invention of the telegraph which for the first time allowed people to communicate instantly across many miles, while trains overtook the horse as the method of conveying post. Inevitably the telegraph lead to the invention of the telephone which provided the means of actually talking to someone many miles away.

Until the telegraph was invented communication technology hadn't changed much for thousands of years, except for the invention of the printing press which would have made the reproduction of the information much easier. But the telegraph seems to have been a catalyst which started an ever accelerating advance of communications technology. The telephone was followed by radio, which in turn was followed by television. While the invention of the computer has fundamentally changed the nature of the data being broadcast in the first place, with analogue transmissions now being replaced with digital.

Computers have allowed ordinary people to communicate in ever more creative ways, the invention of email started the ball rolling while the world wide web made communicating, searching for and sharing information far easier than it had ever been before. Which in recent years has led to the invention of web sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, allowing ever vaster numbers of people to communicate and share their lives with others.

This reminds me of those early humans who, being a social herding animal, would have been driven by a fundamental need to communicate. You see I don't think we are so different from them, we are still compelled to communicate with others, the only difference is that in our time we can communicate with not just our family unit or our 'herd' but the entire species across the entire planet.