Week 4 - Electricity creates the wired world

This week, the revolution of electricity and the invention of the telegraph was examined.  Standage (2011, pg. 105) explains how the growth of the telegraph network became “…nothing short of explosive; it grew so fast that is was almost impossible to keep track of its size”.  It could be argued that the widespread popularity and expansion of this technology was driven by the demand of people for faster technology.  With the introduction of the telegraph, messages could now be delivered faster than the traditional means of a messenger traveling to deliver the message (Crowley & Heyer 2011). 

The need for wanting things more quickly is evident in today’s society.  We are a culture which rely on instant messages and emails as a way communicating quickly, more so than the traditional slower method of a letter in the post for example.  From this angle, it is easy to see how the introduction of faster technology feeds our desire for time saving inventions.  New technology is becoming faster, and as a result, humans are adapting and coming to expect faster communication mediums.  Dorf (2001) confirms this theory, describing our demands of technology innovation, “Not only do we expect sustained progress, but we expect is faster”.

Telegraph operators, in a desire to translate telegram messages more efficiently, often recorded messages using abbreviations and short hand (Standage 2011).  This further illustrates how humans adapted their behaviour in order to “keep up” in a fast pace working culture of this time.

An example of a telegram from 1986 of my father, Mr Michael Pyziakos has been provided below to show how a job was offered via telegram to a successful applicant at the time (Pyziakos 2015):

                                                                                            

Reference List

Crowley, D & Heyer, P 2011, Communication in history: technology, culture, society, 6^th edn, Pearson, Sydney.

Dorf, R 2001, Technology, Humans, and Society: Towards a Sustainable World, Academic Press, California.

Standage, T 2011, “Telegraphy – the Victorian internet”, in D Crowley and P Heyer (eds), Communication in history: technology, culture, society, 6^th edn, Pearson, Sydney.