When I first read that "Until the telegraph, [transportation and communication] were synonymous", I was lost. The statement didn't make sense to me at all. Nowhere in my mind could I even relate the words, much less make them synonymous. I actually had to read the paragraph a couple times to catch it. It never occurred to me before that communication could only travel as fast as transportation. I mean, yes, I knew that mail used to be transported on ships and by land based transportation, but I never really thought about what that meant.
In an age of instantaneous communication, what would it mean for communication to depend on transportation? For instance, if I were so inclined, I could call someone in China and be speaking to them in what? say a minute or less. But sending them a message without a telephone, telegraph, or the internet is practically pointless. Even if you could somehow guarantee that the message would eventually arrive, "eventually" is still the key word. It could take months (or even a year?) by ship and truck. With that time frame and those odds, is there any point in sending a message at all? I'd have a better chance digging the proverbial hole to China and delivering it by hand.
The really scary part is that if I telephoned China, I probably wouldn't even acknowledge the fact that I was talking to someone on the other side of the earth. We take communication technology for granted to the point that it is invisible to us. And the main problem with something that integral is, what happens when its gone? It really does make the world smaller.
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Yea, I don’t know how they did it back then in terms of communication and time. It must have been a horrible felling to get news of a family death days or weeks after the fact. They really did in their own little worlds. Even if they did try to keep up with world news, it was probably all out of whack and in disorientation. I am very grateful for the invention of the telegraph and all that followed but only because of taking this class. Otherwise I wouldn’t have thought twice about how we communicate and wouldn’t be aware of how the first steps in telegraphing came about which would be good to know just in case there is that crazy chance our current technology suddenly vanishes.
I can't even begin to image what it would be like to not have information transmitted as fast as it is now. For example, when the internet slows down all of a sudden in the middle of trying to find something, people begin to become angry and frustrated that at some points we even give up hoping that the next time we log on, it will be back to normal. And we are almost to the point that we are spoiled with broadband access that anything slower is not good enough. I think if worse comes to worse, we'll be able to handle going back to the old ways, but there no one is going to like it.
I think we take technology for granted. Each generation spoils itself with new advancements, and dreams of something more. The new lexus that parallel parks itself, but that isn't enough, we want one that will drive for us. I think that is why technology advances, not because we need it, but because we want it. I can't imagine a time when communication and transportation were synonymous. It reminds me of an episode of "The Simpsons". Bart prank phone calls Australia, and to discuss the problem with the neighbors, the little boy in Australia runs miles and yells it, and so does the next guy and so forth. If right now, to say this, I had to run and deliver it in person to each class, I wouldn't do it. Yet thats what people used to do...am I lazy?
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