It used to be radio was the place that young people gathered to get their information.
You know, photo conversations are replacing verbal conversations. I don't know if that's a bad thing. A photo is worth a thousand words.
Unlike then, the mail stream of today has diminished by such things as e-mails and faxes and cell phones and text messages, largely electronic means of communication that replace mail.
The big change, the really radical change in communication, was in the late 19th century. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph is astronomical. Everything since then has been small increments, including the internet.
People banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use in actual writing, but a code it is, to which linguists are currently devoting articles.
Times change. Cable news and the Internet alone have transformed the way outreach to the American people can be accomplished.
The 'Reader's Digest' used to run a feature called 'It Pays to Increase Your Word Power.' The new wisdom - post-Trump and Brexit - is that it doesn't.
The age of automobiles and aeroplanes cannot express itself in the same manner as did the age of the diligence.
When cellphones came out, my girlfriend refused to get one for five years, because she thought it would turn her into somebody who couldn't connect with other people - and, of course, she got a cellphone.
I think that before people were speaking much about the poor, but now more and more people are speaking to the poor. That is the great difference.
We initially targeted pager networks, which have been suffering for the last decade due to cell phone sales.
That is very different from how it used to be in the 20th century. Media was very one way. There's a small little industry. It broadcasted its message and everyone else in the world just had to listen. Now the internet is allowing what used to be a monologue to become a dialogue. I think that's healthy and actually restoring a more natural way.
When people talk about Web 2.0, they mean that when the Internet, the World Wide Web, first became popular, it was one way only.
As our larynxes descended, we were able to make sounds with our mouths in new and far more expressive ways. Verbal language soon overtook physical gesturing as the primary means of communication for all human beings except Italians. (Earth (The Book), p. 36)
In a way, publishing in 2005 was similar to publishing in 1950. Nobody kept blogs; that was still optional. I didn't even have a website then.
People bemoan the loss of watercooler chat, but I think that there's more of that than ever. It's just that it's online.
We didn't expect it to be cool, with people trading URLs instead of phone numbers.
The Internet has been the most fundamental change during my lifetime and for hundreds of years. Someone the other day said, "It's the biggest thing since Gutenberg," and then someone else said "No, it's the biggest thing since the invention of writing."
People are always saying it's the end of the Gutenberg era. More to the point, it's a return to an oral era. The Gutenberg galaxy was about the written word. At its best, the digital era is part of the rediscovery of the oral. At its worst, it's a Kafkaesque victory of the bureaucratic over the imagination.
In the past, before phones and the Internet, all communication was face-to-face. Now, most of it is digital, via emails and messaging services. If people were to start using virtual reality, it would almost come full circle.
I punched to line. "Yes? What?" "Norville. It's Cormac. If you don't change the subject right now, I'm going to have to go over there and have a word with you.
Email did precisely what I predicted, back in 1978, it took over the postal mail process and system of writing letters.
TV has had a stronger impact on our society than any single invention since the automobile. It has put the dead hand on conversation.
The age of printed pamphlets and political essays has long since been replaced by television, a distracting and absorbing medium which seems determined to entertain itself more than it informs and educates.
Technology is changing the way we interact as humans.
