Communication Technology

The Changing Nature of Human Communication

"Technological change has placed communication in the front lines of a social revolution."

William Paisley, 1985

The word technology comes from the Latin root texere, to weave or to construct. So technology should not be limited just to the use of machines, although this narrower meaning is often implied in everyday speech. Technology is a design for instrumental action that reduces the uncertainty in the cause-effect relationships involved in achieving a desired outcome (Rogers, 1983, p. 12). A technology usually has both a hardware aspect (consisting of material or physical objects) and a software aspect (consisting of the information base for the hardware). For instance, we distinguish between computer hardware (consisting of semiconductors, electrical connections, and the metal frame to protect these electrical components) and computer software (consisting of the coded instructions that enable us to use this tool). Both the software and hardware are essential for any practical use of the computer, but because the hardware technology is more visible to the casual observer, we often think of technology mainly in hardware terms. It is an oversimplification to think of technology as an autonomous, isolated force that is disconnected from the rest of society (Slack, 1984) In this book, we stress the context of the new technologies of study.

One kind of technology -- communication technology -- is especially important in modern societies such as the United States. Communication technology is the hardware equipment, organizational structures, and social values by which individuals collect, process, and exchange information with other individuals. Certain communication technologies go back to the beginnings of human history, such as the invention of spoken language and such written forms as the pictographs on the walls of caves. Mass media technologies (with at least the potential for reaching a mass audience) date from the clay tablets of such early civilizations as the Sumerians and Egyptians. But technologies such as Gutenberg's movable-type printing press did not actually reach a mass audience until the 1830s, with the advent of the "penny press" in the United States. In the decades that followed, such electronic media technologies as film, radio, and television became important. These mass media technologies are mainly unidirectional, allowing one or a few individuals to convey a message to an audience of many. During the 1980s, a different kind of communication technology became important, and it facilitated the exchange of information on a many-to-many basis through computer-based communication systems. Whether you call it "the new communication technologies," "the new media," or "interactive communication," it is obvious that a very basic change is occurring in human communication.

All communication technology extends the human senses of touching, smelling, tasting, and (especially) hearing and seeing. Such extensions allow an individual to reach out in space and time, and thus obtain information that would not otherwise be available (McLuhan, 1965). Media technologies provide us with "a window to the world," and as a result we know more about distant events than we could ever experience directly.

Nature of the New Communication Technologies

The key technology underlying all the other new communication technologies is electronics. Electronics technology these days allows us to build virtually any kind of communication device that one might wish, at a price (Pool, 1983a, p. 6). One special characteristic of the 1980s is the increased number and variety of new communication technologies that are becoming available. Further, and more important, is the nature of how these new. media function; most are for many-to-many information exchanges. Their interactive nature is made possible by a computer element that is contained in these new technologies. In fact, what marks the new communication technologies of the post-1980s era as special is not just the availability of such single new technologies as microcomputers and satellites, but the combining of these elements in entirely new types of communication systems -- for example, the use of satellites to deliver a wide variety of programming to cable television systems. Certain cable TV systems, such as Qube in Columbus, Ohio, are interactive (allowing household users to send, as well as receive, messages) because they utilize a computer at the head-end of the cable system.

Communication technology has had a very strong impact on the nature of scholarly research on human communication. The issues studied by communication scientists over the past forty years have been affected by the changing nature of communication (as we will show in Chapter 3). In the past, the basic division of the scholarly field of communication has been a dichotomy on the basis of channel: interpersonal channels, which involve a face-to-face exchange between two or more individuals, versus mass media channels, all those means of transmitting messages such as radio, television, newspapers, and so on, which enable a source of one or a few individuals to reach an audience of many. This classification is mainly on the basis of the size of the audience, with interpersonal channels reaching from one individual up to a small group of fifteen to twenty. Now, scholars (Dominick, 1983, p. 14) recognize a third category, "machine-assisted interpersonal communication," that has certain qualities of both mass media and interpersonal channels yet is different in several important ways from either one (Chapter 2). An example of such machine-assisted interpersonal communication is the telephone; it does not fit into either category of mass media or interpersonal channels because it is neither face-to-face nor one-to-many. Examples of newer communication technologies are: teleconferencing networks, electronic messaging systems, computer bulletin boards, and interactive cable television.

The new interactive technologies have been available only for several years, and they have not yet become very widely adopted in the United States. Their potential impact, however, is quite high. By 1985, about half of American households had cable television, although only a few cable systems were interactive. Less than 1 percent of American households have videotext or teletext. Over the past decade, 20 percent of households accepted video cassette recorders (VCRs); around 15 percent have at least one microcomputer, and in 1985 about 25 percent of the U.S. work force used computers as their primary work tool. From 1980 to 1985, about 95 percent of American elementary and high schools adopted computers, although less than 10 percent: of the students were enrolled in a class in which microcomputers were used. So the interactive communication technologies are off to a fast start. But just a start.

What is different about human communication as a result of the new technologies?

1. All of the new communication systems have at least a certain degree of interactivity, something like a two-person, face-to-face conversation. Interactivity is the capability of new communication systems (usually containing a computer as one component) to "talk back" to the user, almost like an individual participating in a conversation. The new media are interactive in a way that the older, one-to-many mass media could not be; the new media can potentially reach many more individuals than if they were just face-to-face, although their interactivity makes them more like interpersonal interaction. So the new media combine certain features of both mass media and interpersonal channels.

Interactivity is an inherent property of the communication process, not just of the...