Ruxandra Radulescu, BCC 202, Essay 1

Communication technology and its impacts on media

This essay aims to define the concept of communication technology and to identify the main impacts that it had since the earliest times in mass media, specifically on printed and electronic media, from a global perspective. Technology, itself as a concept, is defined by a process within a social and historical framework. The process cannot be separated from these two important factors, mainly from the social reality, culture or philosophy. Under this aspect, it can be argued that men became more human when they started working, thinking and nevertheless when they created technology, building step by step a connecting technologic environment between society and nature, an environment that is ever growing and that becomes more and denser and constitutes a profound impact upon social, economical, cultural and political development. The notion of technology delineated throughout the process of humankind and each era of societys evolution was marked by the registered progress in technology, in many domains of human activity. Global literature tried to define technology through many perspectives, some more synthetic than others. For example, as the ability to introduce knowledge in a physical artefact such as software, hardware or methodology, a process that refers to a formula that can be used for equipments or machinery. On the other side, technology has been also seen as the science of the most effective achievement of functions that are necessary to mankind but also as the practice, the engineering of these functions. Philosophy of the contemporary society is preoccupied with artificial intelligence, robots, electronic and digital libraries and media that maybe in the future will not wait for the biological evolution of the human kind and with the replacement of human activities in any framework. Therefore, mankind evolves in an era of

Ruxandra Radulescu, BCC 202, Essay 1

knowledge, of information accumulation, part of the informational revolution (Warschauer 2004) Communication as a concept has been defined through various perspectives. One of them, proposed by Carl Hovland and Harold Kelley argues that communication is a process in which an individual or a group, identified as the communicator transmits stimuli that have the aim to change the behaviour of other individuals, groups, identified as the auditorium (Stacks & Salwen 2008). The Oxford Dictionary defines communication as a noun in two ways. One of them is defining the word communications which is a concept that describes the receiving and sending of the information (Oxford 2011). Therefore, bringing together these two terms, technology and communication, the concept of communication technology is created. Communication technologic is self explanatory the technological bases for communication. It is defined as being the machinery, hardware, software, technological tool which serves to facilitate the exchange or process of information between individuals. Communication technology is not a new term, is a process that occurred even from the earliest forms of civilisation, in the shape of drawings carved in caves such as the ones discovered in the earliest Aboriginal communities or the innovation of language, spoken or written. All these forms of art could be called mass communication. Mass communication created with the support of communication technology the mass media (Rogers 1987). Mass media is the tool of freedom speech, the core concept of democracy. For over one hundred fifty years, the cost of communication technology increased continuously with new techniques of communicating, extending the geographic and cultural borders starting with mass-media, photography, radio, television and finally the internet. Since ancient times, communication networks offered huge opportunities for evolution and innovation, supplying the economical and social systems with new structures, from the

Ruxandra Radulescu, BCC 202, Essay 1

aqueducts of the Roman empires or the continental railways of the nineteenth century to the satellite and telecommunication networks of the twentieth century. These networks permitted human kind to counter the barriers of time and space. At the beginning of the third millennium it was obvious that the informational infrastructure, softwares and interconnected networks can have a great impact on the economical and social global structure. They transformed the contemporary society under different aspects, especially in the way in which humankind represent the society in which they live in, their interpersonal relations, the ways in which they can obtain services starting with medical assistance, commerce and media. Printed media, focusing on newspaper existed and will always exist to inform the community. It is demonstrated that in empires like Babylon or Egypt, existed chronicles that would describe the main events of the day. During the Han domination in China, there was published the first informational bulletin called Ti Bao. Communication technologies together with the ancient ones were the ones of the Roman Empire called Acta Diurna who was a big step, because it had structure and organised technology and was also spread outside the empire. But the most important step towards communication technology today was made by Johannes Gutenberg, in 1400 who put together the first printing machine with metal letters. The switch to electronic based media was made by Alexanders Graham Bells attempt to innovate the telegraph technology and created the radio transmission media (Straubhaar, Larose & Davenport 2011). The new computer technology together with the emergence of internet in late twentieth century took over the printed media. A survey conducted by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism to identify the state of media in the United States revealed that forty-one percent of individuals procure the news online comparing to the other ten percent that read it in printed newspapers (Pew Research Centers Project for Excellence in Journalism 2011). The threat of the future is the paperless society and also the emergence of the electronic paper, books in the new display technology. The impact of the new
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Ruxandra Radulescu, BCC 202, Essay 1

communication technology and of the change of media is on the individual. The mechanism of the new media in the informational society creates the possibility that some features specific to a community to become irrelevant on individual level. In the new universe of communication possibilities, in continuous development, the individual loses his sense of self determination and thus tends to live in a virtual environment. Communication technology and the digitization of the media but not only, is described to have a domestication effect by the authors Mansell and Silverstone (1998) explained to be present every minute in the life on an individual surrounded by information and technology (Mansell & Silverstone 1998). To conclude, the term technology, communication and especially communication technology is a term that cannot be separated from its social implications and impacts individuals within a society on various levels such as economical, social and cultural.

Ruxandra Radulescu, BCC 202, Essay 1

References: Mansell, R & Silverstone, R 1988, Communication by design: the politics of information and communication technologies, Oxford University Press, England, United Kingdom Oxford University Press 2011, Oxford Dictionary Online, viewed on the 21st of August 2011 http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/communication Pew Research Centers Project for Excellence in Journalism 2011, The state of the news media: an annual report on American Journalism, viewed on the 18th of August 2011-08-21 http://stateofthemedia.org/ Rogers, EM 1986, Communication technology: the new media in society, Free Press, University of Michigan, USA Stacks, DW & Salwen, MB 2008, An integrated approach to communication theory and research, 2nd. Edn, Taylor & Francis, United Kingdom Straubhaar, J, Larose, R & Davenport, L 2011, Media now: understanding media, culture, and technology, 7th edn, Cengage Learning, Connecticut, USA Warschauer, M 2004, Technology and social inclusion: rethinking the digital divide, MIT Press, Massachusetts, USA

Ruxandra Radulescu, BCC 202, Essay 1