Communication at its earliest form started out as drawings inside caves back in 3000 B.C. At this time humans did not communicate directly with sentences and words as we are used to today, but instead grunts and noises. These grunts could be drawn out on the cave walls in order to better understand one another, starting the flow of communication. This communication flow was usually between very small groups, but with the change of time and new inventions such as the printing press, communication grew began to reach masses. Along with the change of how we technically communicated with each other as in typewriter to telephone; the language we were using and how we vocalized it changed as well.
Over time who communicated with who changed, and how.
At first, the travel of communication was very limited. If you wanted to reach your cousin who lived in the next town that was 25 miles away, it may have taken 3 or more days for them to receive your message. This made communication not as important with people who weren’t within a five-mile radius from where you lived. As time went on and mail carriers were invented, 25 miles was not as far of a distance to send a letter, making communication easier and more available with distant friends or family. Once email was invented communication could be almost instant with anyone who had the same access, which evolved on to text messages that are instant. Although the evolution of how we communicate technically is a great improvement, it has a downfall. With so many ways to communicate instantly either online or on a phone, face-to-face communication has become lost to some. Communication evolved from extremely personal and intimate to completely detached and impersonal.
I liked your last point about how communication has lost it's intimacy. That was one of the things that I gathered from reading this article too. I have a coworker who said that when she is in her house and needs her sons to do something, if she calls for them they won't answer her, but if she texts them they will come and do what she asked. I think this is crazy. Back before texting was around, I know for most people if you heard your mom call for you, you answered and did what she wanted. Times have changed so much, especially over the last five years even.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you completely about the ways in which our interpersonal communication has changed. People can be so much less personal and caring in their discourse with strangers than they may have been before. Tehcnology helps us to shut others out. Cell phones are a great example of this. One of my biggest pet peeves at work is when people are talking on their cell phone and ignoring me. They don't even have the common courtesy to say hello or thank you. Meanwhile,l they are gabbing about their awesome party and everyone around them gets to heard about it. I think technology has had a huge impact on people's social skills in general. That is to say that it has negatively impacted them.
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