The Art of Communications?

Much is being said about the new forms of communications and how they do or do not help us to speak and relate to one another. Some complain that nothing worth while can be said in 140 characters-Twittering. Blackberrys enslave us. Facebook supplants real relationships and texting makes us illiterate.

Consider the history. Socrates, it seems, objected to writing in part because this invention eliminated the need to exercise memory.The telegraph, some call Twitter the 21st century version of the telegraph, caused Henry Thoreau to scoff in the 1840s "Maine and Texas may have nothing to say". Three decades later Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph, declined to buy the patent rights for the next new thing, the telephone, because it provided no permanent record of a conversation. In 1880, Western Union declined as well asking"whether any sensible man would conduct his business by such a means of communications".

When the typewriter came into wide spread use in the 1930s, The New York Times editorialized against the machine arguing "it usurped the art of writing with one's own hand" It also will give rise to untrained authors flooding the world with opinions they have not the experience to hold. Sounds like the knock on today's bloggers.

When I was lobbying the congress for AT&T in the eighties asking for the right to introduce cell phones to America, I argued that expansion of the cell phone would not be to the detriment of other means of communications. I showed Members the power and what the technology would bring. I used a precursor back then of today's Smart phone. Those industries against the expansion included the newspaper, television and radio industries. Why? Revenues, my friends, revenues.

Turns out the newspaper industry was right as they see their ad revenues fade to the Internet and all manner of PDAs. The TV and Radio industries seem to be holding up. Revenues and the demise of an industry, however, has never been and never will be a reason to block technological growth.

History also teaches that the embedded industry tries to block, complain about,seek protection from and ultimately attempt to own the next new communications thing.

The lecture circuit industry of the 18th and 19th centuries, complained about the introduction of large newspapers. newspapers complained about the growth of radio, radio railed against the growth of TV and they are all worried about or trying to own a piece of the Internet.

Folks, embrace it. In my experience there are only two things not diminished by growth,change or being given away: love and knowledge. There is an endless supply of both.