Technology affecting communication Essay Example
Technology affecting communication Essay Example

Technology affecting communication Essay Example

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  • Pages: 6 (1552 words)
  • Published: February 23, 2018
  • Type: Essay
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From the beginning of man and his derivative need to transfer an idea from one person to the next, man as a whole has striver to increase his reach for this transfer. Whether It Is to communicate to more people, or further distances, It has been an ongoing quest since the beginning of time. We will cover the human advancement In technology as it pertains to the way we communicate. Several online sources were used, as well as two books by well know authors in this field.

It does seem to reason that the beginning of this process was slow to start, due to the delinquency of other advancement. Once the key blocks were in place, current or modern day communication was Just around the corner. It took 1300 years to go from making books to making newspapers, but only 9 years

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to go from a typewriter to a copy machine. What Is next. In the Beginning Since the beginning of man, monkey, or whatever belief in evolution a person may have, the advancement of technology has changed the way one being communicates with another.

Our ability to cognitively communicate Is what differentiates us from the rest of the Animal species. "Language Is perhaps the most Important single harmonistic that distinguishes human beings from animal species" (Matthews, 1996) Species of all types are known for their inherent ability to pass along a message of a sort from one to another. Some examples of this are; Ants using pheromone trails to inform other ants of where food they found is located at. Next are cobra snakes that open their hoods to scare away other creatures.

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align="justify">Also, wolves howl to Inform the pack of danger or food. And lastly, baboons groom each other to show affection. Each one of these examples plays a part into the different senses. Smell, sight, hearing, and touch. Communication is not always an audible or visual expression, but can also be expressed by other senses. "These basic forms of communication give form to the origins of man's voyage of communication evolution. The ability to communicate Is vital to a species' survival, and all animal species communicate, some In ways that are impressively proficient.

But none achieve the capacity due in large part to the uniquely human ability to use language" (Deacon, 1997) In the beginning of the human exploit of communication, for the basic premise of this paper, we will start with the conceptual idea that man began communication tit a series of grunts, groans, and body gestures. From there, the grunts and groans turned into a formed, methodical language. Where sounds, or words, were assigned meaning, and then arranged in an order to display a conceptual idea.

In the beginning of historical documented communication, humans first created artistic murals in the form of cave paintings or etchings to capture a moment, or historic event. These works ranged from; a great hunt or directions for travel during migrations, which were often left for others to follow. Somewhere around 3500 B. C. To 2900 B. C. s the approximated time period that the beginning alphabets were established by the Phoenicians, Sumerians, and Egyptians. This establishment of language began art of basic written systematic language.

Ironically enough, it wasn't till over a thousand years later, 1775 B. C.

; the Greeks begin to use a phonetic alphabet similar in design to what we have in use today. It included a huge similarity of how we read from top to bottom, left to right. Our next historic leap did not take place till well after 1600 years later in China. This step can be made to be arguably the largest step in communication. On around 105 B. C. Tsar Lund invented paper as we know it. This is also the point where we can see a more rapid advancement in technology.

Only 5 years later the invention of a type of press was invented, thereby starting the mass media distribution. As a side note, around the period of 30 to 150 B. C. , the Romans were noted to begin trading with the Asian region. At this point, the transfer of knowledge of paper and printing found its way to the European region. Combining the Roman network of trade, which at that point of the Empire stretched half the known world and the advancement in paper, messages were able o be passed several hundreds of miles to several places.

You can almost claim this time period as being the advent of social media. This distribution of ideas began the landslide that brought forth a furthering in technological advancement. In the sass's, the next large technology advancement came around. Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press. An ability to mass produce books meant that a book, normally only read by few, could now be read by hundreds, if not thousands. After the printing press, and its ability to mass produce, the next Four Hundred years gave

way to sizable advancements in technology and media altogether.

Up until this point, the advancements that were being made, in equivalence, took mankind thousands of years. Some of these major breakthroughs include the camera, telegraph, compensations, and typewriter. All of these are the basis to our technology we see and use every day. This original camera gave the origins to Digital cameras we use today. Telegraphs that gave life to the phone, which has advanced several phases in its advancement. The Compensations, which transitioned to modern day film. And the typewriter, which combined with other technologies, turned into the ere tool I am using to write this paper, the computer.

I can guarantee that at no point Henry Mills, the Englishman that patented the first typewriter would have ever dreamed of a time that someone would have the ability to type something out, and send it to millions of people around the world in With the advancements in printing presses, typewriters, and computerized networking, the ability to bring the world together has evolved. In 1950, the largest magazine "Life", was subscribed to by only 36% of the American population. Fortunately "Life" was known to have the highest pass around rate of any magazine, ND took an average of thirteen weeks to be seen by half the population. Centennial, 2011) As of June 30th 2012, there is an estimated 2,405,518,376 users on the Internet. The United States alone is estimated to have 273,785,413 users. This means that 78 percent of the United States population is at any given time researching or viewing something online. (USB, 2012) The impact of being able to contact that size of

a national population up until the last 10 years was untaught-of. So how can all of this "Global Sharing" be a negative factor in society today? How can the ability to warn husbands, if not millions of people of a pending disaster be a negative thing?

Let's look at how this Globalization of information has impacted our society as a whole. Sure there are positives, like I said, warnings of a danger, or gathering information to write a research paper for a college or university. But what kind of negatives can become of this informational Goliath that has erupted. According to the 2009 Digital Future Report, "80 percent of Americans use the Internet. Internet users spend an average of 17 hours a week online. 24 percent of American households have at least three computers. This number shows that less face-to-face interaction is occurring.

So what kind of issues could this cause? As pointed out by the University of Northern Iowa Editorial staff in 2010, "First and foremost, technological communication may be affecting our ability to express our ideas clearly. When you are constantly using abbreviations and slang in texts and online chats, it is hard to remember to use proper grammar when writing formal emails, letters or papers. Technology has the ability to also harm our communication skills at work and in school. It may be degrading our ability to speak publicly and write formally.

Think of how many professors or bosses have probably received a "cue," "deter" or "cay" in an email. " With this loss of communication skills a complete breakdown of expressing ideas clearly will eventually occur. There by making a simple

request, become not so simple. In years past business was conducted in a face to face manner. A seller would contact a buyer by phone, or in person, and attempt to sell his or her product. This business on the golf-course, hand shake, mentality is quickly going away. The human race as a whole is quickly losing the skills of verbal, and non-verbal, immunization that defines us as a whole.

There are countless stories all over the internet of kids today that commit suicide one day "Just out of the blue". And upon further investigation the person had been struggling with severe emotional issues that they were unable to verbalize. Just last month while several states were developing their next year's common core curriculum for the schools, the idea of removing the need to teach Cursive writing came around. Little by little our civilization is De-evolving. We are digressing into what we were ages ago, to a time here all we knew of our fellow race is what we read somewhere.

Not by asking the person, face to face. I am not against new and improved technologies. I am against the concept that a new technology can define the way I communicate.

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