communication then and now essay

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Essay On Ways of Communicating In The Past And Now

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Communication , Technology , People , Horses , Face

Published: 01/16/2020

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Old Ways of Communication

Communication in the past was totally different from these days, because in the past communication was permeative. There were not many ways of communication that people could use in order to talk with each other. People were communicating face to face and with the invention of paper, they started to write messages to one another.

In addition, they used animals such as pigeons and horses to convey their messages. Pigeons carried messages back and forth between people, but with pigeons it took a long time for a message to reach its destination and occasionally messages got lost. For instance, people used to ride horses from one place to other so that they could send messages. On the contrary, nowadays communication is more advanced. With the help of new technology, people become able to communicate in various ways.

Currently, people communicate using cell phones, emails, SMS and in many other ways. These kinds of communication are faster than the old communication methods (paper messages) and people respond to each other within seconds. For example, people email each other and receive immediate responses. With the presence of technological advances everyday, people create new ways to communicate with each other that facilitates talking and transmitting information in a more convenient manner. In conclusion, communication has changed significantly from the past and with the technological inventions that occurred in the 21st century, communicational techniques have developed and are still developing with the purpose to facilitate ways in which people can reach each other.

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Communication: How it Has Changed Over Time

The way we communicate has changed significantly through time, from telephone, to emails, to social media.

Telephones… Emails… Social media... The way we communicate has significantly changed over time. And no I don’t mean going from grunting to actually speaking; although if you have teenagers perhaps that could apply.

Giving Mixed Signals

Since the dawn of time, humans have found ways to communicate with each other. Whether this was using smoke signals, drawings or hand signs, each method had its own restrictions. These forms of communication were replaced when humans found the ability to communicate through sound, therefore leading to the creation of languages.

The more ‘simplistic’ methods of communication were very limited. A smoke signal couldn’t mean ‘help’, ‘it’s someone’s birthday’ and ‘someone’s died’, simply because the surrounding people wouldn’t know which message they were conveying. The last thing the people of the middle ages needed was people partying whilst they were under attack!

The ability to speak revolutionised communication, allowing messages to be sent with emotions were past the point of *insert angry grunt here*. 

Emotions allow us to express our feelings more clearly. In the jump from giving signals to speaking, people were more easily understood.

The Postal Service: The Pigeon Can Finally Retire

When The General Post Office was established in 1660, our methods of communication changed again. Letters had been used for thousands of years, but the postal service allowed citizens to send them to anywhere in the country. 

This was the first big push into getting more people to learn English.

“Can you connect me to line 58 please?”

The shift into digital communication started in 1876, with the invention of the telephone. Over the following decades, trust in new technology grew, and phones made their way into homes across the nation. By the 1930s, telephone communication was a standard practice used by the general public in their day-to-day lives.

The transition from letters to phone calls enabled people to express emotions  audibly.

The Modern Era: Tweet, Poke, Snap

Letters became emails, telephones became smartphones and newspapers became the internet over the last few decades, with technology evolving at an increased pace.

Smart phones don’t just let us call people from anywhere, but also email, text, direct message and a thousand other methods of communication. People can be accessed anytime of the day from pretty much anywhere. Socialising no longer has to be done at the local pub, it can be done from anywhere - come on get the pints in! 

As texting became more and more popular, the new ‘text language’ was created, essentially shortening words and phrases to easy-to-type abbreviations. Nowadays you're more likely to read ‘lol’, than hear someone's laugh. Next came emojis: the simplest way to express emotions digitally. Used by millions of users everyday, the little emoticons are loved by many.

Social Media: Love It or Hate It

Where we are today, communication is definitely a lot more difficult. Social media allows for people to live fake lives, and cover up their true feelings. We as humans naturally crave physical presence, even though we're surrounded by people online, we often still feel isolated.

The platforms allow us to share opinions with others around the globe, giving people much wider insight into the lives of others. Being able to reach family and friends from afar is also always beneficial to people to help them feel connected.

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Who will Lead the Fight against Climate Change?

Ecology and theoretical physics - an unlikely couple, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, the less friendly face of “superfoods”, featured author, latest book, first the media, then us: how the internet changed the fundamental nature of the communication and its relationship with the audience.

In just one generation the Internet changed the way we make and experience nearly all of media. Today the very act of consuming media creates an entirely new form of it: the social data layer that tells the story of what we like, what we watch, who and what we pay attention to, and our location when doing so.

The audience, once passive, is now cast in a more central and influential role than ever before. And like anyone suddenly thrust in the spotlight, we’ve been learning a lot, and fast.

This social data layer reveals so much about our behavior that it programs programmers as much as they program us. Writers for the blog website  Gawker  watch real-time web consumption statistics on all of their posts—and they instantly learn how to craft content to best command an audience. The head programmer for Fox Television Network similarly has a readout that gives an in-depth analysis of audience behavior, interest, and sentiment. In the run-up to the final episode of the American television drama  Breaking Bad , the series was drawing up to 100,000 tweets a day, a clear indication that the audience was as interested in what it had to say as what the producers were creating.

All this connected conversation is changing audiences as well. Like Narcissus, we are drawn to ourselves online and to the siren of ever-more social connections. In her book  Alone Together , Sherry Turkle (2011) points out that at this time of maximum social connection, we may be experiencing fewer genuine connections than ever before. The renowned media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1968, 73) saw the potential for this more than 40 years ago when he observed that  augmentation leads to amputation . In other words, in a car we don’t use our feet—we hit the road and our limbs go into limbo. With cell phones and social devices, we are connected to screens and virtually to friends worldwide, but we may forfeit an authentic connection to the world. Essentially, we arrive at Turkle’s “alone together” state.

In the past, one could turn the media off—put it down, go offline. Now that’s becoming the exception, and for many, an uncomfortable one. Suggest to a young person today that she go offline and she’ll ask, “Offline, what’s that?” or “Why am I being punished?” We are almost always connected to an Internet-enabled device, whether in the form of a smartphone, fitness monitor, car, or screen. We are augmented by sensors, signals, and servers that record vast amounts of data about how we lead our everyday lives, the people we know, the media we consume, and the information we seek. The media, in effect, follows us everywhere, and we’re becoming anesthetized to its presence.

It is jarring to realize that the implication of this total media environment was also anticipated more than 40 years ago by McLuhan. When he spoke of the “global village,” his point was not just that we’d be connected to one another. He was concerned that we’d all know each other’s business, that we’d lose a measure of privacy as a result of living in a world of such intimate awareness. McLuhan (1969) called this “retribalizing,” in the sense that modern media would lead us to mimic the behavior of tribal villages. Today, the effects of this phenomenon help define the media environment: we consciously manage ourselves as brands online; we are more concerned than ever with each other’s business; and we are more easily called out or shamed than in the bygone (and more anonymous) mass communication era.

We maintain deeply intimate relationships with our connected devices. Within minutes of waking up, most of us reach for a smartphone. We go on to check them 150 or more times throughout the day, spending all but two waking hours with a mobile device nearby (IDC 2013). As these devices become omnipresent, more and more data about our lives is nearly permanently stored on servers and made searchable by others (including private corporations and government agencies).

This idea that everything we do can be measured, quantified, and stored is a fundamental shift in the human condition. For thousands of years we’ve had the notion of accountability to an all-seeing, all-knowing God. He kept tabs on us, for our own salvation. It’s one of the things that made religion effective. Now, in just a few thousand days, we’ve deployed the actual all-seeing, all-knowing network here on earth—for purposes less lofty than His, and perhaps even more effective.

We are also in the midst of an unprecedented era of media invention. We’ve passed from the first web-based Internet to the always-connected post-PC world. We will soon find ourselves in an age of pervasive computing, where all devices and things in our built world will be connected and responsive, with the ability to collect and emit data. This has been called the  Internet of Things .

In the recent past, the pace of technological change has been rapid—but it is accelerating quickly. One set of numbers tells the story. In 1995, the Internet connected together about 50 million devices. In 2011, the number of connections exceeded 4.3 billion (at the time roughly half of these were people and half were machines). We ran out of Internet addresses that year and are now adopting a new address mechanism called IPv6. This scheme will allow for about 340 billion billion billion billion unique IP addresses. That’s probably the largest number ever seriously used by mankind in the design of anything. (The universe has roughly 40 orders of magnitude more atoms than we have Internet addresses, but man didn’t invent the universe and for the purpose of this chapter it is not a communication medium, so we’ll move on.)

Here is a big number we will contend with, and soon: there will likely be one trillion Internet-connected devices in about 15 years. Nothing on earth will grow faster than this medium or the number of connected devices and the data they emit. Most of these devices will not be people, of course, but the impact of a trillion devices emitting signals and telling stories on our mediated world cannot be overstated.

To visualize the size of all this, imagine the volume of Internet connections in 1995 as the size of the Moon. The Internet of today would be the size of Earth. And the Internet in 15 years the size of giant Jupiter!

Exponential change like this matters because it points out how unreliable it is to predict how media will be used tomorrow. Examining the spotty record of past predictions is humbling and helps open our minds to the future.

In 1878, the year after he invented the phonograph, Thomas Edison had no idea how it would be used; or rather, he had scores of ideas—but he could not come up a priori with the killer application of his hardware. Edison was a shrewd inventor who kept meticulous notes. Here were his top 10 ideas for the use of the phonograph:

• Letter writing, and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer.
• Photographic books, which will speak to blind people without effort on their part.
• The teaching of elocution.
• Music—the phonograph will undoubtedly be liberally devoted to music.
• The family record; preserving the sayings, the voices, and the last words of the dying members of the family, as of great men.
• Music boxes, toys, etc.—A doll which may speak, sing, cry or laugh may be promised our children for the Christmas holidays ensuing.
• Clocks, that should announce in speech the hour of the day, call you to lunch, send your lover home at ten, etc.
• The preservation of language by reproduction of our Washingtons, our Lincolns, our Gladstones.
• Educational purposes; such as preserving the instructions of a teacher so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment; or learn spelling lessons.
• The perfection or advancement of the telephone’s art by the phonograph, making that instrument an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent records.

He first attempted a business centered on stenographer-free letter writing. That failed, largely because it was a big threat to the incumbent player—stenographers. It would be years (and a few recapitalizations) later that music would emerge as the business of phonographs. And this was a business that survived for well over 100 years before cratering.

When I reflect on my own career, I see this pattern of trying to understand—“Exactly what is this anyway?”—constantly repeat itself. In 1993, I collaborated with Bill Gates (1995) as he wrote  The Road Ahead . The book outlined what Gates believed would be implications of the personal computing revolution and envisioned a future profoundly impacted by the advent of what would become the Internet. At the time, we called this a “global information superhighway.”

I was working with Gates on envisioning the future of television. This was one year before the launch of the Netscape (then Mosaic) browser brought the World Wide Web to the masses. In 1993, we knew that in the coming years there would be broadband and new distribution channels to connected homes. But the idea that this would all be based on an open Internet eluded us completely. We understood what technology was coming down the pike. But we could not predict how it would be used, or that it would look so different from what we had grown accustomed to, which was centralized media companies delivering mass media content from the top down. In 1993 what we (and Al Gore) imagined was an “information superhighway”—Gates and I believed that this would be a means to deliver Hollywood content to the homes of connected people.

We understood that the Internet would be a means to pipe content to connected homes and to share information. But here’s what we missed:

• User-Generated Anything . The idea that the audience, who we treated as mere consumers, would make their own content and fascinate one another with their own ideas, pictures, videos,  feeds , and taste preferences ( Likes ) was fantastical. We knew people would publish content—this had been taking place on online bulletin boards and other services for years. But the idea that the public would be such a big part of the media equation simply did not make sense.
• The Audience As Distributor, Curator, Arbiter . We’d all be able to find content, because someone big like Microsoft would publish it. The idea that what the audience liked or paid attention to would itself be a key factor in distribution was similarly unfathomable. It would take the invention of Google and its PageRank algorithm to make clear that what everyone was paying attention to was one of the most important (and disruptive) tools in all of media. In the early 2000s, the rise of social media and then social networks would make this idea central.
• The Long Tail . In retrospect, it seems obvious: in a world of record shops and video rental stores it cost money to stock physical merchandise. Those economics meant stocking hits was more cost-effective than keeping less popular content on the shelves. But online, where the entire world’s content can be kept on servers, the economics flip: unpopular content is no more expensive to provision that a blockbuster move. As a result, audiences would fracture and find even the most obscure content online more easily than they could at Blockbuster or Borders. This idea was first floated by Clay Shirky in 2003, and then popularized by  Wired ’s Chris Anderson in 2004. That was also the year Amazon was founded, which is arguably the company that has capitalized on this trend most. It has been one of the most pervasive and disruptive impacts of the Internet. For not only has the long tail made anything available, but in disintermediating traditional distribution channels it has concentrated power in the hands of the new media giants of today: Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. (And Microsoft is still struggling to be a relevant actor in this arena.)
• The Open Internet . We missed that the architecture of the Internet would be open and power would be distributed. That any one node could be a server or a directory was not how industry or the media business, both hierarchal, had worked. The Internet was crafted for military and academic purposes, and coded into it was a very specific value set about openness with no central point of control. This openness has been central to the rapid growth of all forms of new media. Both diversity and openness have defined the media environment for the last generation. This was no accident—it was an act of willful design, not technological determinism. Bob Khan at DARPA and the team at BBN that crafted the Internet had in mind a specific and radical design. In fact, they first approached AT&T to help create the precursor of the Internet and the American communication giant refused—they wanted no part in building a massive network that they couldn’t control. They were right: not only was it nearly impossible to control, but it devoured the telephony business. But as today’s net neutrality battles point out, the effort to reassert control on the Internet is very real. For 50 years the Cold War was the major ideological battle between the free world and the totalitarian world. Today, it’s a battle for openness on the Internet. The issues—political and economic at their core—continue to underpin the nature of media on the Internet.

The Internet Gives Television a Second Act

New media always change the media that came before it, though often in unexpected ways. When television was born, pundits predicted it would be the death of the book. (It wasn’t.) The death of television was a widely predicted outcome of Internet distribution, the long tail, new content creators, and user-generated media. This caused fear in Hollywood and a certain delight, even schadenfreude in Silicon Valley. At conferences, technology executives took great pleasure in taunting  old media  with its novel forms and reminding the establishment that “it is only a matter of time.” New media would fracture audiences, and social media would hijack the public’s attention. The Internet was set to unleash an attention-deficit-disorder epidemic, leading viewers away from traditional television programming en masse. Yet television is doing better than ever. What happened?

As it turns out, the most widely discussed topic on social media is television. One third of Twitter users in the United States post about television (Bauder 2012), and more than 10 percent of all tweets are directly related to television programming (Thornton 2013). New forms of content (as well as new distribution methods) have increased the primacy of great programming, not diminished it. Competing platforms from Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and others have meant more competition for both network and cable television networks—and more power for program creators over whose content all the new distributors are fighting.

Despite the volume of content accessible via online platforms—100 minutes of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute—people still spend much of their time watching television, and television programming continues to reach a large majority of the population in developed countries. In the United States, people consume an average of 4 hours and 39 minutes of television every day (Selter 2012). In the United Kingdom, nearly 54.2 million people (or about 95 percent of the population above the age of four) watch television in a given week (Deloitte 2012). Thus, it appears that the “demise of television” is far from imminent (Khurana 2012).

In fact, television is better than it has ever been. Few predicted, even five years ago, that we would find ourselves in the middle of a new golden age in television. There is more content vying for our attention than ever before, and yet a number of rich, complex, and critically-acclaimed series have emerged. Shows like  Heroes , Mad Men ,  Breaking Bad ,  Game of Thrones , and  Homeland  are a testament to the success with which television has adapted to a new and challenging climate.

Networks are now developing niche shows for smaller audiences, and thrive on distribution and redistribution through new platforms. Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and HBO GO have pioneered new forms of viewing and served as the catalyst for innovative business deals. The practice of  binge viewing , in which we watch an entire season (or more) of a program in a short amount of time, is a product of on-demand streaming sites and social media. Before, viewers would have to consume episodes of televisions as they were aired or wait for syndication. Boxed DVD seasons were another way that audiences could consume many episodes at once, but this often meant waiting for networks to trickle out seasons spaced over time. Now, networks are pushing whole seasons to platforms such as Netflix at once. With enough spare time, one can now digest a whole series in an extremely condensed time frame.

This has changed not only our viewing habits, but also the nature of television content. Screenwriters are now able to develop deeper and more complex storylines than they ever had before. Where once lengthy, complex, and involved storylines were the domain of video games, we see this type of storytelling in drama series with some regularity. In addition, television shows are now constructed differently. As audiences become more conscious of the media and media creators, we find that programming is much more self-referential. Jokes on shows like  The Simpsons ,  Family Guy ,  30 Rock , and  The Daily Show  are often jokes about the media.

The consumption of television via on-demand streaming sites is not the only significant change to how we consume television content. There has been a tremendous shift in how we engage with television programming and how we interact with one another around television.

During the early decades of television, television viewing was a scheduled activity that drew groups of people together in both private homes and public spaces. The programming served as the impetus for such gatherings, and television watching was the primary activity of those who were seated in living rooms or stood before television sets in department stores or bars. Television continued to serve as a group medium through the 1960s and 1970s, but technological innovations ultimately transformed viewer behavior. The remote control, the videotape, the DVR, and mobile devices have led people to consume television content in greater quantities, but they do so increasingly in isolation. Once a highly anticipated social event, television programming is now an omnipresent environmental factor.

As television moved from a communal appointment medium to an individual activity initiated on demand, the community aspect of television has moved to the Internet. We have recreated the social function of television, which was once confined to living rooms, online—the conversation about television has expanded to a global level on social networking sites.

The sharp rise in multiscreen consumption is perhaps one of the most significant changes in modern media consumption, and has been a source of both excitement and concern among television network and technology executives alike. This form of media multitasking, in which a viewer engages with two or more screened devices at once, now accounts for 41 percent of time spent in front of television screens (Moses 2012). More than 60 percent of tablet users (Johnson 2012) and nearly 90 percent of smartphone users (Nielsen 2012) report watching television while using their devices.

Currently, television viewers are more likely to engage with content about television programming (such as Tweets or Facebook status updates) on complementary devices than they are to consume supplementary programming (such as simulcast sports footage) on a second screen. What is clear is that even if we are watching television in isolation, we are not watching alone.

Even when we’re alone, we often watch television with friends. Some 60 percent of viewers watch TV while also using a social network. Of this group, 40 percent discuss what they are currently watching on television via social networks (Ericsson 2012). More than half of 16 to 24-year-olds regularly use complementary devices to communicate with others via messaging, e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter about programs being watched on television (Ericsson 2012).

With all of this online communication, of course, comes data. With exacting precision, Twitter can monitor what causes viewers to post about a given program. During the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, a performance by Jay-Z and Kanye West generated approximately 70,000 tweets per minute (Twitter 2013). Later in the program, the beginning of a performance by Beyoncé generated more than 90,000 tweets per minute. Before she exited the stage, the superstar revealed her pregnancy by unbuttoning her costume. Tweets spiked at 8,868 per second, shattering records set on the social network shortly after such significant events as the resignation of Steve Jobs and the death of Osama Bin Laden (Hernandez 2011).

It is clear that television programming drives social media interaction. But do tweets drive consumers to tune in to a particular program? A report by Nielsen (2013) suggests that there is a two-way causal relationship between tuning in for a broadcast program and the Twitter conversation about that particular program. In nearly half of 221 primetime episodes analyzed in the study, higher levels of tweeting corresponded with additional viewers tuning in to the programming. The report also showed that the volume of tweets sent about a particular program caused significant changes in ratings among nearly 30 percent of the episodes.

The second-screen conversation about television programming is not limited to Twitter. Trendrr (2013), a social networking data analysis platform, recorded five times as much second-screen Facebook activity during one week in May 2013 than on all other social networks combined. Facebook recently released tools that will allow partner networks, including CNN and NBC, to better understand second-screen conversation taking place on the social network as it happens (Gross 2013). Using these tools, it is now possible to break down the number of Facebook posts that mention a certain term during a given time frame.

This real-time data—about who is watching television, where they are watching it from, and what they are saying about it—is of interest not just to television executives and advertisers, but the audience, too. There are several drivers for social television watching behavior, including not wanting to watch alone and the desire to connect with others (Ericsson 2012). Beyond connecting with the audience at large, dual-screen television viewers report using social networks to seek additional information about the program they are watching and to validate their opinions against a public sample.

I’ve witnessed times in my own life where watching TV alone became unacceptable. In order to make my viewing experience tolerable, I needed to lean on the rest of the viewing audience’s sensibility. Moments like these changed my relationship to the medium of television forever.

In January 2009, I watched the inauguration of President Barack Obama on television along with 37.8 million other Americans. As Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office, he strayed from the wording specified in the United States Constitution. I recognized that something had gone wrong—the president and the chief justice flubbed the oath? How could that be? What happened? I immediately turned to Twitter—and watched as everyone else was having the same instantaneous reaction. The audience provided context. I knew what was going on.

Twitter was equally useful to me during Super Bowl XLV when the Black Eyed Peas performed at the halftime show. The pop stars descended from the rafters of Cowboys Stadium and launched into a rendition of their hit song “I Gotta Feeling.” It sounded awful. I turned to my girlfriend in dismay: “There is something wrong with the television. My speakers must have blown! There is no way that a performance during the most-watched television event of all time sounds this horrible.” After tinkering with my sound system to no avail, I thought, “Maybe it’s not me. Could it be? Do they really sound this bad?” A quick check of Twitter allayed my fears of technical difficulties—yes, the Black Eyed Peas sounded terrible. My sound system was fine.

As the level of comfort with and reliance upon multiscreen media consumption grows among audiences, content producers are developing rich second-screen experiences for audiences that enhance the viewing experience.

For example, the Lifetime channel launched a substantial second-screen engagement for the 12th season of reality fashion competition  Project Runway  (Kondolojy 2013). By visiting playrunway.com during live broadcasts of the show, fans could vote in opinion polls and see results displayed instantly on their television screens. In addition to interactive voting, fans could access short-form video, blogs, and photo galleries via mobile, tablet, and desktop devices.

There are indications that second-screen consumption will move beyond the living room and into venues like movie theaters and sports stadiums. In connection with the theatrical rerelease of the 1989 classic  The Little Mermaid , Disney has created an iPad app called “Second Screen Live” that will allow moviegoers to play games, compete with fellow audience members, and sing along with the film’s score from their theater seats (Stedman 2013). In 2014, Major League Baseball will launch an application for wearable computing device Google Glass that will display real-time statistics to fans at baseball stadiums (Thornburgh 2013).

Music: Reworked, Redistributed, and Re-Experienced Courtesy of the Internet

The Internet has also completely transformed the way music is distributed and experienced. In less than a decade physical media (the LP and the CD) gave way to the MP3. Less than a decade after that, cloud-based music services and social sharing have become the norm. These shifts took place despite a music industry that did all it could to resist the digital revolution—until after it had already happened! The shareable, downloadable MP3 surfaced on the early web of the mid-1990s, and the music industry largely failed to recognize its potential. By the early 2000s, the Recording Industry Association of America had filed high-profile lawsuits against peer-to-peer file sharing services like Napster and Limewire (as well as private persons caught downloading music via their networks). Total revenue from music sales in the United States plummeted from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $6.3 billion in just ten years (Goldman 2010).

The truth was inescapable: its unwillingness to adopt new distribution platforms had badly hurt the music industry’s bottom line. Television (having watched the music debacle) adjusted far better to the realities of the content business in the digital age. But the recording industry was forced to catch up to its audience, which was already getting much of its music online (legally or otherwise). Only in recent years did major labels agree to distribution deals with cloud-streaming services including Spotify, Rdio, iHeartRadio, and MOG. The music industry has experienced a slight increase in revenues in the past year, which can be attributed to both digital music sales and streaming royalties (Faughnder 2013).

Ironically, what the music industry fought so hard to prevent (free music and sharing) in the early days of the web is exactly what they ended up with today. There is more music available online now than ever before, and much of it is available for free.

Applications like Spotify and Pandora give users access to vast catalogs of recorded music, and sites like SoundCloud and YouTube have enabled a new generation of artists to distribute their music with ease. There is also a social layer to many music services. Their sites and applications are designed to allow users to share their favorite songs, albums, and artists with one another. Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube (among others) enable playlist sharing.

The rapid evolution of online music platforms has led to fundamental changes in the way we interact with music. The process of discovering and digesting music has become an almost frictionless process. Being able to tell Pandora what you like and have it invoke a personalized radio station tailored to your tastes is not only more convenient that what came before it, it’s a qualitatively different medium. Gone are the days when learning about a new artist required flipping through the pages of a magazine (not to mention through stacks of albums at the record store).

As a kid I didn’t have much of a popular music collection, which was somewhat traumatic whenever it came to throwing a party or having friends over. The cool kids had collections; the rest didn’t. Telling friends to bring all their LPs over for the night didn’t make a lot of sense growing up in New York City, where they’d have to drag them along in a taxi or public bus. Fast forward to 2011. I was hosting a cocktail party at my home in San Francisco, which became an experiment in observing the effect of different kinds of Internet music services. In the kitchen, I played music via an iPod that contained songs and albums I had purchased over the years. (And my collection still was not as good as my cool friends.) In the living room, I streamed music via the Pandora app on my iPhone. Guests would pick stations, skip songs, or add variety as the night went on. Upstairs, I ran Spotify from my laptop. I had followed, as the service allows you to do, two friends whose taste I really admired—a DJ from New York, and a young woman from the Bay Area who frequently posted pictures of herself at music festivals to Facebook. In playing a few of their playlists, I had created the ultimate party soundtrack. I came across as a supremely hip host, without having to curate the music myself. Ultimately, everyone gravitated upstairs to dance to  my  Spotify soundtrack.

The iPod, Pandora, and Spotify all allowed me to digitally deliver music to my guests. However, each delivery device is fundamentally different. Adding music to an iPod is far from a frictionless process. I had purchased the songs on my iPod over the course of several years, and to discover this music I depended on word of mouth of friends or the once-rudimentary recommendations of the iTunes store. Before the introduction of iCloud in 2011, users had to upload songs from their iTunes library to an iPod or iPhone, a process that took time (and depending on the size of a user’s library, required consideration of storage constraints).

With Pandora came access to a huge volume of music. The Internet radio station boasts a catalog of more than 800,000 tracks from 80,000 artists. And it is a learning system that becomes educated about users’ tastes over time. The Music Genome Project is at the core of Pandora technology. What was once a graduate student research project became an effort to “capture the essence of music at the fundamental level.” Using almost 400 attributes to describe and code songs, and a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them, Pandora sought to generate stations that could respond to a listener’s taste and other indicators (such as the “thumbs down,” which would prevent a song from being played on a particular station again).

Spotify has a catalog of nearly 20 million songs. While the size of the service’s catalog is one of its major strengths, so too are its social features. The service, which launched in the United States in 2011 after lengthy negotiations with the major record labels, allowed users to publish their listening activity to Facebook and Twitter. The desktop player enabled users to follow one another, and make public playlists to which others could subscribe. In addition, users could  message  each other playlists. The sharing of Spotify playlists between connected users mimicked the swapping of mixtape cassettes in the late eighties and early nineties.

All of these are examples of how what the audience creates is a growing part of the creative process.

In the heyday of the album, the exact flow of one song to another and the overall effect was the supreme expression of overall artistic design and control. It wasn’t only the songs—the album represented 144 square inches of cover art and often many interior pages of liner notes in which to build a strong experience and relationship and story for your fans. It was a major advance over the 45, which provided a much smaller opportunity for a relationship with the band. With the arrival of MP3s, all of this was undone. Because we bought only the songs we were interested in, not only was the artist making less money, but he had lost control of what we were listening to and in what order. It didn’t much matter, because we were busy putting together playlists and mixtapes where we (the audience) were in charge of the listening experience.

The Internet has given us many tools that allow us to personalize the listening experience. More than that, listening to music has increasingly become a personal activity, one that is done in isolation. The simplicity with which music can be consumed online has changed music from an immersive media to a more ambient media, one that is easily taken for granted.

Interestingly, the rise in personal consumption of music (via MP3 and the cloud) has coincided with a sharp rise in festival culture. Now more than ever, audiences seek to be together—whether in Indio, California for Coachella; Black Rock City, Nevada for Burning Man; Chicago, Illinois for Lollapalooza; or Miami, Florida for the Ultra Music Festival—to experience music as a collective group.

At a time where we collectively listen to billions of hours of streamed music each month, nothing compels us in a stronger fashion than the opportunity to come together, outdoors, often outside of cell phone range, to bask in performances by our favorite artist. Festival lineups are stacked with independent artists and superstars alike. Interestingly, a lineup is not unlike a long playlist on iTunes. There is no way to catch every performance at South by Southwest or Electric Daisy Carnival—but there is comfort in knowing that many of your favorite artists are there in one place.

This has also proven out economically. At a time when selling recorded music had become ever-more challenging, the business of live music is experiencing a renaissance. In 2013, both weekend-long installments of the Coachella festivals sold out in less than 20 minutes and raked in $47.3 million in revenue (Shoup 2013). The rise of festivals (now one in every state of the U.S.) is a response to the Internet having made the act of consuming recorded music more ambient and banal than ever before while creating the need for greater social and immersive experiences.

At the core of going to a music festival or listening to  The White Album  with a group of friends is the need to experience music collectively. It is a realization that beyond even the song itself, perhaps the most inspiring and rousing element of music is not just the music itself, but our collective human experience of it.

Today, as the audience is restlessly making its own media, it is also learning fast that with new media come new rules and new exceptions. Media confer power on the formerly passive audience, and with that comes new responsibilities.

This was made startlingly evident in the wake of the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. At five o’clock in the evening on April 18, the FBI released a photo one of the suspects and asked the public for help in identifying him. Hours later, the Facebook page of Sunil Tripathi, a student who bore a resemblance to the suspect and was reported missing, was posted to the social news site Reddit. Word spread that this was the bomber. Within hours the story was amplified by the Internet news site BuzzFeed and tweeted to its 100,000 followers. Only, Tripathi had nothing to do with the crime. His worried family had created a Facebook page to help find their missing son. Over the next few hours Tripathi’s family received hundreds of death threats and anti-Islamic messages until the Facebook page was shut down.

The audience was making media, and spontaneously turning rumors into what appeared to be facts but weren’t, and with such velocity that facts were knocked out of the news cycle for hours that day (Kang 2013).

Four days later, an editor of Reddit posted to the blog a fundamental self-examination about crowd-sourced investigations and a reflection of the power of new media:

This crisis has reminded all of us of the fragility of people’s lives and the importance of our communities, online as well as offline. These communities and lives are now interconnected in an unprecedented way. Especially when the stakes are high we must strive to show good judgement and solidarity. One of the greatest strengths of decentralized, self-organizing groups is the ability to quickly incorporate feedback and adapt. reddit was born in the Boston area (Medford, MA to be precise). After this week, which showed the best and worst of reddit’s potential, we hope that Boston will also be where reddit learns to be sensitive of its own power.

(erik [hueypriest] 2013)

We are now able to surround ourselves with news that conforms to our views. We collect friends whose tastes and opinions are our own tastes and opinions. The diversity of the Internet can ironically make us less diverse. Our new media are immersive, seductive, and addictive. We need only turn to today’s headlines to see how this plays out.

On October 8, 2013, a gunman entered a crowded San Francisco commuter train and drew a .45-caliber pistol. He raised his weapon, put it down to wipe his nose, and then took aim at the passengers.

None of the passengers noticed because they were attending to something far more interesting than present reality. They were subsumed by their smartphones and by the network beyond. These were among the most connected commuters in all of history. On the other side of their little screens, passengers had access to much of the world’s media and many of the planet’s people. They were not especially connected to the moment or to one another. They were somewhere else.

Only when the gunman opened fire did anyone look up. By then, 20-year-old Justin Valdez was mortally wounded. The only witness to this event, which took place on a public train, in front of dozens of people, was a security camera, which captured the scene of connected bliss interrupted. The  San Francisco Chronicle reported the district attorney’s stunned reaction:

“These weren’t concealed movements—the gun is very clear,” said District Attorney George Gascón. “These people are in very close proximity with him, and nobody sees this. They’re just so engrossed, texting and reading and whatnot. They’re completely oblivious of their surroundings.”

Gascón said that what happened on the light-rail car speaks to a larger dilemma of the digital age. As glowing screens dominate the public sphere, people seem more and more inclined to become engrossed, whether they are in a car or a train or are strolling through an intersection.

In 1968, Marshall McLuhan observed how completely new media work us over. In  War and Peace in the Global Village  he wrote, “Every new technological innovation is a literal amputation of ourselves in order that it may be amplified and manipulated for social power and action.” (73)

We’ve arrived in full at an always-on, hyper-connected world. A network that connects us together yet can disconnect us from our present reality. An Internet that grants us the ability to create and remix and express ourselves as never before. One that has conferred on us responsibilities and implications we are only beginning to understand. The most powerful tools in media history are not the province of gods, or moguls, but available to practically all mankind.  The media  has become a two-way contact sport that all of us play. And because the media is  us , we share a vital interest and responsibility in the world we create with this, our extraordinary Internet.

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The Music Industry in an Age of Digital Distribution

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Mass Media Then and Now:  A Historical Framework for Regulating Controversial Speech On the Internet

Much as the rise of the Gutenberg press transformed communication and ushered in vast societal changes, the rise of the Internet continues to transform communication and society today.  It is helpful to think of “the media” as having undergone several distinct phases, each bringing about profound changes in the transmission of ideas.  Each phase has raised new challenges and considerations for how speech should be regulated, or not.

Understanding this historical framework can help address some burning questions of the day in media law.  This framework can help answer where to draw the line of responsibility or potential liability for tech companies that de-platform individuals like former President Trump or deprive Internet infrastructure to alternative platforms like Parler.  This framework can help answer what to expect of technology companies, large and small, in managing misinformation, such as disinformation about election results associated with the Capitol riots.

In the pre-media phase, the ability to reach a wide audience was limited.  Ideas could be carved in hieroglyphics on a cave wall.  A person could send out a letter or telegram to select individuals, delivered by a courier.  Or a speaker could address a gathering of individuals in small groups.

This pace of communication made it very difficult for new ideas to disseminate or transform societies.  Unwelcome or dissenting ideas could be ignored or easily managed by power figures, including patriarchs or dominant institutions.

Mass Media – First Wave

The invention of the printing press, with movable type in 1440, marked the technological innovation that laid the groundwork for the rise of mass media in the centuries that followed.  With this invention, ideas could be printed into physical posts, books or newspapers, all capable of reaching a wide audience like never before.

The capacity to physically print and disseminate ideas ushered in profound societal changes, including the ability to challenge religious dogma.  It became possible and far easier to spread new ideas, from scientific discoveries to social movements.  Society moved out of the Dark Ages.

After the printing press came other technologies, such as radio and television broadcast, that likewise enabled the ability to reach a large audience easily.  What all these technological developments shared in common, however, was one thing:  a high barrier to entry. It cost a lot to run or operate a printing press or to produce a radio or television show.

Consequently, the power of mass communication became concentrated in the hands of relatively few individuals or institutions.  Those individuals or institutions effectively served as gate-keepers.  Gatekeepers enjoyed special privileges, along with certain obligations to the public.

This understanding gave rise to government regulation of media and First Amendment jurisprudence in the United States.  The U.S. government created the FCC in 1934 to grant licenses to television and radio broadcasters, in exchange for their commitment to serve the public interest with quality programming.

First Amendment jurisprudence granted publishers certain protections, in the form of legal privileges, that made it hard to sue publishers, except in egregious circumstances where the publisher acted with maliciousness or recklessness in publishing false or inaccurate information.  As the Supreme Court effectively recognized in its landmark precedent New York Times vs. Sullivan in 1964, publishers needed to be allowed a certain amount of breathing room and margin of error in order to carry out their important reporting functions, which are necessary to serve the public interest in a robust democracy.

Mass Media – Second Wave

The rise of the Internet in the 1990s spawned the next phase of mass media, much as the printed press sparked the first phase, nearly 500 years previously.  The Internet made it possible for anyone to reach a large audience.  Anyone could become a publisher by creating his or her own blog or website or by commenting through stories on social media.

Social media became a driver for disseminating news.  Social media, along with the rest of the Internet, redistributed much power away from traditional news publishers to individuals.  Individuals gained the power to determine what was newsworthy, what went viral, and even what seemed true.  The previously high entry barriers to reach a mass audience became lowered, if not removed entirely.

Originally, the U.S. government heavily protected all the players in the Internet ecosystem, who became known as information service providers or intermediaries, for their role facilitating the exchange of information and ideas.  In the 1990s, Congress passed two laws -- the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) -- that afforded even broader protections to these service providers than the protections previously given to traditional publishers under traditional First Amendment law.  The protections offered under the CDA and DMCA give social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and many smaller platforms, which carry user generated content, broad immunity from liability for carrying speech of others.  These statutes also provide the same, broad immunity to purveyors of the technical infrastructure that platforms rely on to deliver content to users.

Although these intermediary protection laws have recently come under great attack from both ends of the political spectrum, in so many ways, they make a lot of sense.  The barrier to entry is low to nil for any individual speaker on the Internet.  Consequently, the intermediaries themselves typically are less situated for a meaningful gatekeeping function than a traditional newspaper or book publisher (or radio or television producers). 

A newspaper or book publisher, but not the intermediaries on the Internet, typically invest a lot of time in the creation of the stories themselves.  A newspaper or book publisher holds fairly exclusive keys in deciding what to publish, but intermediary service providers generally do not, because there are so many different avenues for speech on the Internet.  With less power for the intermediary players should come less responsibility.

The courts and Congress, nevertheless, have begun to reign in the wide latitude they initially granted to intermediaries in the Internet ecosystem.  In 2016, the Ninth Circuit chipped away at the CDA’s very broad immunity provision when it ruled that an online, roommate matching service was liable for asking users for their roommate matching preferences, in violation of anti-discrimination housing laws.  Congressional passage of Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) in 2018 set out to penalize technology companies that assist companies like Backpage in profiting from human sex trafficking.  Both developments were previously unthinkable under the spirit of the CDA’s broad immunity protections, also known as Section 230 of the CDA, or simply “Section 230.”    

Now a clamor has been growing for platforms to be held responsible for the accuracy of information they spread and also for content moderation decisions seen as biased in one direction or another.  People express the sometimes opposing concerns that platforms disseminate harmful information, on the one hand, and censor controversial views, on the other.  In March 2021, Congress held hearings where they paradoxically drubbed the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google for doing too much (in suppressing controversial, conservative views) -- or not doing enough (by not suppressing misinformation by Trump and his supporters associated with the Capitol riots).

Where should the lines of responsibility be drawn at this stage of the Internet age?  These are pressing questions of the day, with far-reaching ramifications for democracy and speech in the 21st century.  Answers will not be simple.

However, arriving at a good answer involves considering two questions:  First, what barriers to entry do speakers face?  Second, what is the gatekeeping power of each player or institution that enables dissemination?  These factors historically have shaped mass media through each phase of its evolution and have influenced regulations or protections overall fitting for the times.

Application to Hot Topics in Media Technology Law Today

De-platforming individuals -- including former President Trump

Let’s apply these factors to the question of de-platforming individuals on social media by Facebook and Twitter.  First, the barrier to entry for publishing elsewhere on the Internet (including on other social media platforms or on a blog, website, or online newsletter service) are extremely low.  The entry barrier is even lower for someone like former President Trump, who has been sought as an investor and contributor to platform alternatives to Facebook and Twitter.  Trump also has announced plans to create his own platform.  Second, any one platform does not hold the keys to dissemination of any one individual’s message, given the many online alternatives out there and the inherently limited interaction with users who generate content.

Depriving Infrastructure Services to Platforms like Parler

The analysis looks a little different when it comes to decisions by Internet infrastructure providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), to withhold infrastructure from a particular party.   AWS suspended service to  Parler, an alternative conservative microblogging site, where many Trump supporters migrated to and engaged in posts encouraging violence following the 2020 election.

After the Capitol riots in early January 2021, AWS warned Parler to improve its moderation and stop violating AWS’ acceptable use policy prohibiting the "illegal, harmful, or offensive" use of AWS services.  After Parler failed to do so, AWS suspended services, citing the risk to public safety.  This decision became the subject of a federal lawsuit, Parler v. AWS, filed on January 11, 2021.

In that situation, the federal court ruled in a preliminary injunction hearing that AWS was entitled to suspend services, given the threat to public safety. The court ruled that forcing AWS to reinstate services before Parler could moderate violent content effectively would not serve the public interest, given the risk of further violence.

However, what if the claim had been that AWS refused to provide service to Parler solely because of its conservative views that AWS deemed offensive?  Parler tried to argue that AWS engaged in preferential treatment of Twitter based on viewpoint, but the court did not find any facts to support that claim. If the evidence had supported it, then AWS depriving Parler of critical Internet infrastructure, solely based on viewpoint, would have been far more troubling.  That is because Parler would face a huge barrier to developing its own technology to host its own site.  Moreover, there are few meaningful alternatives for powering a platform, making AWS a key gatekeeper to dissemination.

These considerations favor the application of “net neutrality” principles to infrastructure service providers that power the platforms.  Net neutrality incorporates the legal concept of treating certain service providers on the Internet as “common carriers” of public goods, which means they have a duty to provide the service to any paying customer without discrimination.  Some people concerned about censorship by platforms want to see this concept also applied to platforms themselves; however, given all the current, easily accessible alternatives for Internet speech (such as other platforms, blogs, websites, and newsletters), there is no need to impose net neutrality on platforms, unlike the providers of infrastructure services that power them.

Misinformation: Conspiracy Theories, Election Results, and More

The next question is how responsible platforms and other service providers should be for the dissemination of misinformation -- such as QAnon conspiracy theories or misinformation about election results or COVID treatments.  First, the barrier to entry for any one speaker on a topic, however misinformed his or her views, is generally very low.  A speaker has many other online avenues to deliver his or her message.

Second, the gatekeeping power of platforms and other service providers is relatively low but varies depending on their size. As a starting point, it may be hard for platform providers to know that controversial or misinformed views are, in fact, deeply inaccurate from the outset.  Occasionally, controversial views do later turn out to be correct. Remember it once was considered heretical to believe that the earth was round or that it revolved around the sun.  Sometimes the inaccuracy of information becomes evident only with the passage of time, once new information has accumulated.  Sometimes the inaccuracy can only be found in the nuances of the content. 

In this light, larger tech platforms seem to be acting reasonably by tagging posts about controversial topics (such as elections or COVID treatments) with links to known, reliable information on these topics.  Another reasonable approach has been tagging posts with labels alerting viewers that the content in question is disputed or inaccurate.

Notably, larger platforms have more resources to invest in tools and human resources to monitor content than smaller platforms.  Any standard of liability for platforms should consider the ratio between the platform’s size and resources on the one hand, and ability and opportunity to monitor content and serve as a meaningful gatekeeper for quality content, on the other.  Holding smaller platforms to the same standards as the largest platforms like Facebook would result in making it practically impossible for small or mid-sized platforms to survive, grow, and compete in the market -- ultimately reducing available alternative venues to speakers, the exact opposite of the ideal result.

In short, the bigger the platform, the more potential power it has to manage misinformation and the more we can expect of it in addressing the problem.  Conversely, the smaller the platform, the less might it has to throw at the problem, and our expectations should be scaled back accordingly.  As Congress endeavors to scale back the protections of Section 230 of the CDA, it may impose some new duty to prevent the spread of dangerous or harmful information (beyond the anti-sex trafficking

obligations  of SESTA/ FOSTA).   If so, any new regulation should incorporate a sliding scale of expectations or obligations. 

The second wave of mass media, spawned by the arrival of the Internet, dramatically lowered barriers for speakers to reach a mass audience.  At the same time, it created an ecosystem of intermediaries with less power as gatekeepers than traditional newspapers, book publishers, radio or television stations.  Understanding these dynamics in historical context helps make sense of the evolving regulations of speech.  This offers a helpful roadmap for the direction that regulation and protections should take from here.

About the author : Karen Kramer is a strategic leader, thought partner, and seasoned legal advisor for media and technology companies of all sizes.  At the forefront of digital media for more than 25 years, she has led Fortune 500 companies, like Yahoo, The Washington Post, and Tribune Media, in executing cutting-edge media initiatives, launched social media platforms such as Quora and Houzz into global markets, and provided prepublication review to numerous newspapers, TV stations and book publishers to manage the risks of publisher liability.

This piece was originally published in the Santa Clara High Tech Law Journal and is the first of what will be a series of articles about the industry.

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How has technology changed - and changed us - in the past 20 years?

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• Since the dotcom bubble burst back in 2000, technology has radically transformed our societies and our daily lives.
• From smartphones to social media and healthcare, here's a brief history of the 21st century's technological revolution.

Just over 20 years ago, the dotcom bubble burst , causing the stocks of many tech firms to tumble. Some companies, like Amazon, quickly recovered their value – but many others were left in ruins. In the two decades since this crash, technology has advanced in many ways.

Many more people are online today than they were at the start of the millennium. Looking at broadband access, in 2000, just half of Americans had broadband access at home. Today, that number sits at more than 90% .

This broadband expansion was certainly not just an American phenomenon. Similar growth can be seen on a global scale; while less than 7% of the world was online in 2000, today over half the global population has access to the internet.

Similar trends can be seen in cellphone use. At the start of the 2000s, there were 740 million cell phone subscriptions worldwide. Two decades later, that number has surpassed 8 billion, meaning there are now more cellphones in the world than people

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The future of jobs report 2023, how to follow the growth summit 2023.

At the same time, technology was also becoming more personal and portable. Apple sold its first iPod in 2001, and six years later it introduced the iPhone, which ushered in a new era of personal technology. These changes led to a world in which technology touches nearly everything we do.

Technology has changed major sectors over the past 20 years, including media, climate action and healthcare. The World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers , which just celebrated its 20th anniversary, gives us insight how emerging tech leaders have influenced and responded to these changes.

Media and media consumption

The past 20 years have greatly shaped how and where we consume media. In the early 2000s, many tech firms were still focused on expanding communication for work through advanced bandwidth for video streaming and other media consumption that is common today.

Others followed the path of expanding media options beyond traditional outlets. Early Tech Pioneers such as PlanetOut did this by providing an outlet and alternative media source for LGBTQIA communities as more people got online.

Following on from these first new media options, new communities and alternative media came the massive growth of social media. In 2004 , fewer than 1 million people were on Myspace; Facebook had not even launched. By 2018, Facebook had more 2.26 billion users with other sites also growing to hundreds of millions of users.

While these new online communities and communication channels have offered great spaces for alternative voices, their increased use has also brought issues of increased disinformation and polarization.

Today, many tech start-ups are focused on preserving these online media spaces while also mitigating the disinformation which can come with them. Recently, some Tech Pioneers have also approached this issue, including TruePic – which focuses on photo identification – and Two Hat , which is developing AI-powered content moderation for social media.

Climate change and green tech

Many scientists today are looking to technology to lead us towards a carbon-neutral world. Though renewed attention is being given to climate change today, these efforts to find a solution through technology is not new. In 2001, green tech offered a new investment opportunity for tech investors after the crash, leading to a boom of investing in renewable energy start-ups including Bloom Energy , a Technology Pioneer in 2010.

In the past two decades, tech start-ups have only expanded their climate focus. Many today are focuses on initiatives far beyond clean energy to slow the impact of climate change.

Different start-ups, including Carbon Engineering and Climeworks from this year’s Technology Pioneers, have started to roll out carbon capture technology. These technologies remove CO2 from the air directly, enabling scientists to alleviate some of the damage from fossil fuels which have already been burned.

Another expanding area for young tech firms today is food systems innovation. Many firms, like Aleph Farms and Air Protein, are creating innovative meat and dairy alternatives that are much greener than their traditional counterparts.

Biotech and healthcare

The early 2000s also saw the culmination of a biotech boom that had started in the mid-1990s. Many firms focused on advancing biotechnologies through enhanced tech research.

An early Technology Pioneer, Actelion Pharmaceuticals was one of these companies. Actelion’s tech researched the single layer of cells separating every blood vessel from the blood stream. Like many other biotech firms at the time, their focus was on precise disease and treatment research.

While many tech firms today still focus on disease and treatment research, many others have been focusing on healthcare delivery. Telehealth has been on the rise in recent years , with many young tech expanding virtual healthcare options. New technologies such as virtual visits, chatbots are being used to delivery healthcare to individuals, especially during Covid-19.

Many companies are also focusing their healthcare tech on patients, rather than doctors. For example Ada, a symptom checker app, used to be designed for doctor’s use but has now shifted its language and interface to prioritize giving patients information on their symptoms. Other companies, like 7 cups, are focused are offering mental healthcare support directly to their users without through their app instead of going through existing offices.

The past two decades have seen healthcare tech get much more personal and use tech for care delivery, not just advancing medical research.

The World Economic Forum was the first to draw the world’s attention to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the current period of unprecedented change driven by rapid technological advances. Policies, norms and regulations have not been able to keep up with the pace of innovation, creating a growing need to fill this gap.

The Forum established the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network in 2017 to ensure that new and emerging technologies will help—not harm—humanity in the future. Headquartered in San Francisco, the network launched centres in China, India and Japan in 2018 and is rapidly establishing locally-run Affiliate Centres in many countries around the world.

The global network is working closely with partners from government, business, academia and civil society to co-design and pilot agile frameworks for governing new and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) , autonomous vehicles , blockchain , data policy , digital trade , drones , internet of things (IoT) , precision medicine and environmental innovations .

Learn more about the groundbreaking work that the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network is doing to prepare us for the future.

Want to help us shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Contact us to find out how you can become a member or partner.

In the early 2000s, many companies were at the start of their recovery from the bursting dotcom bubble. Since then, we’ve seen a large expansion in the way tech innovators approach areas such as new media, climate change, healthcare delivery and more.

At the same time, we have also seen tech companies rise to the occasion of trying to combat issues which arose from the first group such as internet content moderation, expanding climate change solutions.

The Technology Pioneers' 2020 cohort marks the 20th anniversary of this community - and looking at the latest awardees can give us a snapshot of where the next two decades of tech may be heading.

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World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Essay on Communication in 100, 200 and 300 Words: The Essence of Survival

• Updated on  
• Oct 20, 2023

Do you know how important it is to communicate with others? Communication is the primary means through which individuals share information, ideas and thoughts. Communication fosters strong relationships. In this essence, writing an essay on communication becomes important where you highlight the importance of communication, how it affects our everyday lives and what skills are required to become a communication professional . Let’s explore all these questions with some essays on communication.

This Blog Includes:

Essay on communication in 100 words, essay on communication in 200 words, essay on communication in 300 words.

Also Read: Essay on Freedom Fighters

Communication is the cornerstone of human interaction and is crucial to sharing ideas, thoughts and information. By communicating, people foster relationships, which is vital for personal and professional growth. Effective communication facilitates understanding, resolves conflicts, and promotes collaboration. Whether verbal or nonverbal, it forms the basis of successful teamwork, decision-making, and social integration.

Clear communication is key to a harmonious society, nurturing empathy, and building trust. It encourages brainstorming, creative thinking, and the development of new solutions to complex problems. Its impact is profound, shaping the way we interact, learn, and evolve, making it an indispensable tool for human connection and progress. 

What makes communication important is that it serves as the bedrock for exchanging ideas, information, and emotions. It is the essence of human interaction, enabling us to convey our thoughts, beliefs, and intentions to others. Effective communication is essential in every aspect of life, whether in personal relationships, professional environments, or social interactions.

Effective communication can form the basis of trust and mutual understanding and understanding. In personal relationships, communication fosters understanding and empathy, allowing individuals to express their feelings and needs, while also listening to and acknowledging others. 

In the professional realm. Communication allows the smooth functioning of organizations. With communication, individuals can disseminate information, set clear expectations and encourage collaboration among team members. Moreover, effective communication in the workplace enhances productivity and promotes a positive work culture.

The uses and benefits of communication are not limited to just personal and professional realms. In social environments also, communication allows diverse groups to understand each other’s cultures, beliefs, and values, promoting inclusivity and harmony in society.

You can call communication a fundamental pillar of human existence, as it helps in shaping our relationships, work environments, and societal interactions. Its effective practice is essential for nurturing empathy, building trust, and fostering a more connected and understanding world.

Also Read: Essay on the Importance of English Language

How crucial communication is can be explained by the fact that it allows the smooth transfer of ideas, thoughts, feelings and information. Communication is the lifeblood of human interaction, playing a crucial role in the exchange of ideas, information, and emotions. It serves as the cornerstone of relationships, both personal and professional, and is integral to the functioning of society as a whole. 

In personal relationships, it is essential to have effective communication for clear understanding and empathy. It allows individuals to express their thoughts, feelings, and needs, while also providing a platform for active listening and mutual support. Strong communication fosters trust and intimacy, enabling individuals to build meaningful and lasting connections with others.

Without communication, you might struggle for organizational success in the professional world. Clear and effective communication within a team or workplace ensures that tasks are understood, roles are defined, and goals are aligned. It enables efficient collaboration, problem-solving, and decision-making, contributing to a positive and productive work environment. Moreover, effective communication between employers and employees promotes a sense of transparency and fosters a healthy work culture.

In a broader sense, communication is vital for social integration and cultural understanding. It bridges the gaps between diverse groups, facilitating the exchange of values, beliefs, and perspectives. Effective communication fosters inclusivity and respect for cultural differences, contributing to a more harmonious and cohesive community.

However, communication is not just about sharing information and ideas. It also encompasses nonverbal cues such as body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice, all of which play a significant role in conveying meaning and emotions. It is the glue that binds individuals and communities together, fostering understanding, empathy, and collaboration. Practicing clear and empathetic communication is vital for creating a more connected, inclusive, and harmonious world.

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Communication is the process of exchanging ideas, information, thoughts and feelings between individuals or groups through the use of verbal and nonverbal methods.

To write an essay on communication, you need to describe what communication is, what the importance of communication in our lives and how it can help us know different aspects of life.

To become an effective communicator, you must become an active listener and understand what others have to say. You must learn to express your thoughts clearly and concisely. You also need to ensure your body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice perfectly align with your ideas.

For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu .

Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

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Then and now: communication through the ages

• Kailun Zhang
• October 20, 2015

In 2015, getting in contact with someone is hardly ever a problem. From calling, text message and email to Snapchat, Skype and Facebook, there are a multitude of ways to chat. This generation is known for being in a constant state of interaction, but it wasn’t always this easy.

Think about Romeo and Juliet. If only they had iMessage, then maybe they wouldn’t have found themselves in such a pickle. Granted, we’ve come a long way from counting on messengers on horseback to deliver the memo.

There’s been a lot of advancement in how we stay connected. It’s strange to think that there was once a time without even telephones — when the only way to talk to old friends was with pen and paper. Yet, it was once a reality.

Here’s a look back at what it looked like, and the evolution of how we communicate.

Smoke signals Used by Indigenous tribes in the 1500s

Smoke signals are actually one of the oldest forms of long-distance communication. Native tribes had their own signalling systems and soldiers in Ancient China would send smoke off the Great Wall during war.Even today, nothing quite says “help” like sending up some smoulder.

Pigeon post Used by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago

These squawking birds weren’t always just an accessory to cobblestone streets and street meat stands. Thousands of years ago, pigeons were used as a means of communication. Pigeons would carry messages on tiny pieces of rolled up paper in a metal canister attached to their feet. They would be sent to their desired destination, sometimes by train, where they could then be given a response to fly back with.

Fun fact: pigeons actually have an internal compass that allows them to find their way home from thousands of kilometres away.

Snail mail Earliest surviving piece of mail from 255 B.C.

Postal services have been around since humans learned how to write. Through the ages, transportation of snail mail has included dogsleds, donkeys, balloons and submarines. In 2006, Canada Post delivered about five billion pieces of mail, though annual volume has since dropped to below four billion. Nowadays, mail is usually junk, but it makes receiving the rare handwritten letter all the more special.

Electrical telegraph First American electrical telegraph invented in 1836

Telegraphy revolutionized communication by bidding goodbye to physically transported messages. First formally introduced in the 1830s and  1840s, electrical telegraphy used electrical currents sent through long wire — sometimes spanning across an ocean — to deliver messages across long  distances. Morse code was developed by assigning dots and dashes to certain letters to spell out messages.

Another fun fact: Nokia’s original text message — or rather, short message service — tone was actually “SMS” in morse code.

Telephone First telephone patented in 1876

Ah, the telephone — a Canadian legacy. The first long-distance phone call was made by Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant, Thomas Watson, on Aug. 10, 1876, from Brantford to Paris, Ontario. Watson would also receive the first transcontinental phone call in 1915, where Bell said the same thing he said in 1876: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” When Bell died in 1922, around 14 million telephones in the U.S. and Canada stopped ringing for one minute in his memory.

Text messaging First text message sent in 1992

The first person to receive a text message was simply wished a “Merry Christmas”.

The concept of sending short, quick messages was first proposed by a man named Friedhelm Hillebrand in 1984. His idea that most sentences and questions fit within 160 characters lives on in today’s 160-character text length and 140-character tweet length.

A study by Experian Marketing Services estimated that 18 to 25 year olds today send an average of 1,914 texts a month, but that may not even account for the tons of messages sent through WiFi rather than cellphone carriers. Now, a mobile phone isn’t a necessary part of sending a text message. Text messaging over the internet is gaining ground with services like iMessage, WhatsApp and even Facebook messenger, which allow texts to be sent over devices such as tablets and iPods.

Video messaging First camera phone sold in 1996 in Japan

The introduction of video calling changed the way people interact. Skype, for example, has probably salvaged many long-distance relationships. But apart from conference calling and video-chatting, apps like Snapchat and Periscope are changing the communication game. People can now rapidly interact face-to-face in small snippets, whether it be a single moment or emotion. They can also add elements to communication that don’t exist in real life — who doesn’t love a good Snapchat filter?

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Traditional Media vs. New Media

Need to write an old media vs. new media essay? Find here an A+ example! It studies the evolution of traditional to new media, explains how Internet has replaced newspapers, and gives examples.

Introduction

• Old vs. New Media

The Evolution of Traditional to New Media

Lots of people are now talking about new media as opposed to old or traditional media. However, there is still some uncertainty as regards the distinction between new and old media. Flew (2008) notes that the idea of ‘newness’ is rather subjective and relative as television and the Internet have become accessible almost simultaneously in such countries as India or China.

Other researchers suggest a particular distinction between new and old media based on the use of the Internet and digital technology (Salman et al., 2011). Noteworthy, researchers agree that the distinction between the two types of media is less important than the convergence of these types (Collins, 2013).

It is possible to state that the three standpoints are correct to a certain extent and it is possible to combine them. Thus, the distinction between old and new media is a bit blurred but still meaningful even though the two types of media are likely to converge into the third type.

Despite close connection between the two types of media, it is possible to draw the distinction between them. Logan (2010, p. 4) claims that new media “incorporate two-way communication” and are associated with computing (e.g. the Internet, social networks), while old media do not require computing (radio, print newspapers, TV). This standpoint can be easily illustrated.

Thus, newspapers and television are rather one-way sources of information. Viewers do not often participate in the creation of the programs. Admittedly, there are call-ins but the amount of participation is still irrelevant. When it comes to newspapers, they are not created by the readers.

Each piece of news is told by a journalist. Readers can only write letters or call the newspaper and it is the editor who decides whether to add the commentary to the next issue or not. However, it is necessary to note that at the era of newspapers and television there was no need in such two-way channels. People strived for news and they simply wanted to be aware of the latest events in the world.

Remarkably, people of the twenty-first century seek for networking and they want to feel connected. Boyd and Ellison (2008) stress that networking has become very popular as people feel certain empowerment. Thus, online resources are characterized by the immediate feedback (Ryan, 2010). Users post their commentaries and express their opinions on a variety of issues (Newman, 2011).

Moreover, people affect media’s agendas, so-to-speak. Jenkins (2006) mentions the story of a teenager who unintentionally caused the start of anti-American demonstrations and almost caused legal actions against himself. Internet users also feel their own relevance with the help of blogging. Keen (2010) emphasizes negative effects of such empowerment.

The researcher argues that blogging along with various applications available online makes people distracted from some really important things. Keen (2010, p. 55) articulates the idea that ‘democratized’ media only leads to the future where “everyone is an author, while there is no longer any audience”.

The present distinction is based on the degree of collaboration between producers of content and consumers. Van Dijk (2006) introduces a structural component of the distinction between new media and old media stating that the former are structurally different (i.e. two-way) from the latter (i.e. one-way).

It is also possible to differentiate between the old and new media focusing on their ‘popularity’. As far as old media are concerned, they are seen as somewhat outdated and they are declining. For instance, researchers note that there is certain decrease in newspapers circulations in many countries (Cervenka, 2005). Younger generations prefer searching the net to reading print newspapers.

Television is also losing points steadily. At the same time, the Internet and especially social networks are becoming more and more popular. Popularity of the Internet is due to its accessibility and multi-functionalism (O’Reilly, 2005). Internet users are attracted by the variety of options offered.

Thus, users can communicate, express opinions, share files, create certain communities, find information, etc. It is possible to state that this distinction is also relevant. Hence, it is possible to note that the distinction between old and new media is based on two dimensions, popularity and structure.

Remarkably, some researchers claim that there is a distinction based on the form. Chun (2005) notes that new media require computing and digital technology (unlike old media). Nevertheless, such media as online newspapers and digital TV are becoming increasingly popular. Some call these new media, but it is somewhat inaccurate. It is more appropriate to talk about the third type of media or the convergence of the two types.

Thus, Skoler (2009) states that the two types of media can facilitate each other. For instance, the author argues that social media can help develop such old media as newspapers. The researcher notes that people can continue telling stories and reporting about things they see, but it is journalists’ job to process the information and present the most relevant news only (Skoler, 2009).

This convergence of social networks and newspapers can be beneficial for both as the former get the air of confidence and the latter have access to almost unlimited sources of information.

French (2011) also claims that convergence of different types of media is beneficial for the development of the very concept of media. The researcher stresses that the so-called old media are now becoming digitalized. People have online newspapers and digital TV. They also keep using social networks and other applications. This helps people remain up-to-date and connected.

Thus, it is possible to state that the distinction between old and new media is becoming totally blurred as the third type of media occurs. It is possible to call it global, digital, collaborative and old and new media can be a characteristic of the twentieth century.

To sum up, it is possible to note that the distinction between old and new media can be based on several features. The most relevant distinction is based on the structural component and popularity. Thus, new media are characterized by computing and connectedness while old media do not possess these features.

However, it is also necessary to note that even this distinction is becoming somewhat blurred due to the changes taking place in the society of the twenty-first century.

Newspapers and TV are now digitalized and these media start being more collaborative (i.e. customers are getting involved in the process of creation of the products). This collaboration is beneficial for the media as well as the development of the society. People are now ready to collaborate and interact, which is crucial for the globalized world of the twenty-first century.

Reference List

Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. (2008). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 13 (1), 210-230.

Cervenka, A. (2005). Roles of traditional publications and new media. Innovation Journalism, 2 (4), 121-230.

Chun, W. H. K. (2005). Did somebody say new media? In W.H.K. Chun & T. Keenan (Eds.), New media, old media: A history and theory reader (pp. 1-12). New York: Routledge.

Collins, R. (2013). New bad things . Huffington Post . Web.

Flew, T. (2008). Introduction to new media. In T. Flew (Ed.), New media: An introduction (pp. 1-20). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

French, K. (2011). Emerging convergence. The Hub . Web.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide . New York: New York University Press.

Keen, A. (2010). Why we must resist the temptation of web 2.0. In B. Szoka & A. Marcus (Eds.), The next digital decade: Essays on the future of the internet (pp. 51-56). Washington: Techfreedom.

Logan, R. K. (2010). Understanding new media: Extending Marshall McLuhan . New York: Peter Lang.

Newman, N. (2011). Mainstream media and the distribution of news in the age of social discovery. Reuters Institute . Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 29). Traditional Media vs. New Media. https://ivypanda.com/essays/old-media-and-new-media/

"Traditional Media vs. New Media." IvyPanda , 29 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/old-media-and-new-media/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Traditional Media vs. New Media'. 29 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Traditional Media vs. New Media." October 29, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/old-media-and-new-media/.

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Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Cell Phones — Cell Phones: Then and Now

Cell Phones: then and Now

• Categories: Cell Phones Gadgets

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Published: Sep 1, 2023

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