One theme I connected from The Victorian Internet to chapter 7 of Seeing What’s Next is an initial lack of confidence and/or interest in new technologies by society. Christensen states that the announcement of the transistor by Bell Laboratories “was a collective yawn” (p 157). Similarly, Standage states that Cooke and Morse had the challenge of “convincing people of [the telegraph’s] significance” (p 40). He describes how people just wanted to see the telegraph rather than use it because they didn’t understand how it could be useful, and religious leaders viewed it as “black magic” (p 52).
A second theme connecting Standage, Bush and Christensen’s works is the concept of performance – i.e. speed. The purpose of the telegraph is to be able to communicate and send messages instantaneously. Additionally, one way telegraphers got their reputations was based on how quickly they could send a message. Christensen’s discussion of the transistor highlights that the microprocessor industry focuses on performance of how fast electrons travel the distance of a chip. The users of each product increasingly demanded higher performance. Bush talks about how the speed of electrons is “necessary in television, for motion pictures rather than stills are the object” (4).
Thirdly, both the telegraph and transistor businesses customized their industry. The telegraph did this through the use of codes by businesses. In this sense, companies had a unique proprietary “language” that they used to communicate over wires so that outsiders were left in the dark. Tensilica customized the transistor industry by allowing the customer to “mix-and-match intellectual property blocks” (p 164). This is Tensilica’s specialty, which is also a theme discussed by Bush. He states, “…specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress” (p 2).
A forth theme found in As We May Think and The Victorian Internet is information overload. Bush states that as we get more specialized, there is more information to sift through and not enough time or memory capacity to take it all in. Information overload is also touched on by Standage when he talks about how the pace of business increased once use of the telegraph became mainstream.
Questions:
1) Another theme in the readings is setting standards. How did setting standards benefit or hurt the telegraph and transistor business?
2) Was the introduction of the automated telegraph a result of undershot or overshot customers? Provide an explanation for your answer.
3) Each reading talked about the role of experts. How as the need for experts in the communications industry evolved over the past century?
Filed under: Evolution & Trends in Digital Media
