'Communication
lets me down', a big ‘fave’ of mine from the 80's you know.
Tony Hadley,
of Spandau Ballet, if I'm not very much mistaken? Yes, I know, I'm really
showing my age now, but it's what came into my mind when I started thinking
about this blog.
Well it does,
doesn't it? Let us down I mean.
Communication
breakdown is the cause of conflict between individuals, couples, families,
groups, countries, and continents. It is the single biggest problem on the
planet. It’s misunderstandings that fuel wars. Solving them would be the
solution to world peace, for sure J.
So, what are
we doing about it?
How are we
approaching it?
Communication
over long distances has shrunk the world.
Firstly this
took place through letters, (or smoke signals maybe?) being delivered by horseman or stagecoach or
even in person. (The pigeon was another method of delivery, but this was to
convey rather short messages.)
Imagine the
revolution the invention of the telephone made; it began to change people's
lives, and their horizons. That was as recently as 1876!
"Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution" (Tracy Chapman 1988),
and there really was a revolution in the year this song was released, because
mobile phones showed up, and began to catch on very quickly (well maybe a
little earlier than this).
Come to
think about it, Captain James T. Kirk of the Star ship ‘Enterprise’ had one way
back in the sixties. Do you remember those first Star Trek TV shows? They had
'intercoms', yes, this was the first the world saw of 'flip-top' mobile phones.
How did they
know?? Very forward thinking…
Oh dear, we
are having a bit of a ‘Bus Trip down memory lane’ with this blog aren't we?
Funny how
thoughts get triggered by reference points that open up an Aladdin’s Cave of
memories, locked away in the ' time-capsule' of our minds.
Back to the
programme.
Communication,
where was I?
Ah, yes,
mobile phones. A blessing or a curse?
Well, from
their brick-like beginnings, to the thin slice of glass that they have become,
mobile phones led the way in distance communication. Until now...
The arrival
of the Internet around 1982 changed everything.
(Do you
know, I hardly use phone calls at all as a way to communicate now? Email and
text messaging is far easier, and less intrusive. This seems to be a trend as
statistics show that Smartphone owners aged 18-24 now send and receive 4,000
messages per month, that’s staggering isn’t it! And now, 4 billion people in
the world use text messaging compared with 3.5 billion using email, although
this is thought to exceed over 4 billion by end of 2015.)
The Internet
is now King, and is everywhere, all the time, in all directions, instantly,
that is, if you can afford high-speed broadband. (My feeling is that the
Internet will be free soon as we are so dependent on it, and actually, we are
being controlled, and conditioned through it.)
This is ‘unlimited’ distance communication, but, I am not
even going to go there today, I'll save that for another blog...
I would, however,
like to leave you with one thought though.
Captain Kirk
was ahead of his time, or maybe he was behind? After all he is in our future.
His 'intercom' is way out of date now; Android devices and the iPhone make it
look like an antique!
By the time we get to his 'star date', distance communication
will have taken a quantum leap, and will perhaps be inside of us?
Maybe first in the form of hardware chips, but for sure, by
Kirk’s era of ‘boldly going where no man has gone before’, distance
communication will have gone beyond electronics, and will be through pure
consciousness.
By then, perhaps
telepathy could be our main mode of communication...
Now there’s
a thought…
What do you
think?
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