In what ways have the developments in the technologies of information and communication affected the course of human history?
...ake the text. Gutenberg is also credited with the first use of an oil-based ink, and using "rag" paper introduced into Europe from China by way of Muslims. Printing quickly became the most important means of mass communication. Again it was religion who first tried to use this development of information and technology to their advantage. Gutenberg’s first printed book was the bible; other religiously themed were most popular at the beginning of the printing revolution. The Catholic Church commissioned printers to produce religious books, materials, pamphlets, etc. Therefore in the early years of printing it is fair to say that printing did little to affect human history. Historian Elizabeth Eisenstein recognized this, “ the first century of printing produced a bookish culture that was not very different to that produced by the scribes” and “ one must wait until a full century after Guttenberg before the outlines of new world pictures begin to emerge into view”. Although the Catholic Church were using printing to engage the masses much more efficiently than before this is not to say that the technology was welcomed with open arms. Up to this time scriptures were held and interpreted by scholar priests and the church feared that printing would bring a loss of control. As it turned out their fears were realized as this new technology became a weapon used against the church. The printing press played a pivotal role in the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther spearheaded this movement against the Catholic Church. By 1517 it was possible for Luther to print his ideas without the permission of religious or political authorities. His opinions and ideas spread rapidly in way would not have been possible 100 years previous. Printing also brought a more literate society who was able to interpret religion for them for the first time. Robert Kingdon summarizes aptly the printing presses impact on the Reformation: "Scholars have long recognized the essential role of the press in spreading Protestant doctrine. Luther himself, in fact, claimed that the invention of printing was a gift from God to reform His church. But Eisenstein argues that print did more than spread the Protestant Reformation: in an important sense, print caused the Reformation. Without access to the printed editions of biblical texts and church fathers, and the worrisome variants on crucial dogmatic issues they contain, Luther might never have been stimulated to develop his revolutionary new theology. And without accessibility to print, Luther might never have spread his ideas not only in the Latin of the scholarly community but also in the vernacular German of the lay community." The Reformation wasn’t the only movement printing aided; the spread of the ideas of the Renaissance would hardly have had such an impact without it. However the Renaissance began well before the invention of printing, historians credit Petrach with it’s origins in the mid 14th century in Northern Italy. Eisenstein illustrates the causative effects of printing by dividing the Renaissance into pre and post printing phases. She discovered that “re-births” of humanism were not uncommon in the Medieval period but the Italian Renaissance differed only with the advent of printing. She argued that the Renaissance flourished because of “typographic fixity” i.e., the preserving power of print. For her the fall of Constantinople in 1453 would have brought the Renaissance to an end. For many years to come printing spread the new radical ideas to the masses and so it can be argued that it had a profound affect on any new movement as they all would have spread their ideas through print. The print medium was also used for propaganda purposes by regimes such as the Nazis. James Burke writes that “printing was to bring about the most radical alteration ever made in Western intellectual history, and its effects were to be felt in every area of human activity.” Only digital technology today is compared in the same breath as the printing press in terms of its significance. The development of printing as a technology of information and communication saw the rise of a print dominated society, one that moved away from the Church’s monopoly of information that existed during the manuscript book period. It is important to note that the Gutenberg press was essentially unchanged from the time of its invention until the 19th century. It wasn’t until this century that the next essential development in the technologies of information and communication were developed. We have seen that distance, time, and location continued to obstruct people’s ability to communicate for centuries and advances in information and communication technologies progressed slowly. In the mid 19th century this began to change. Within 150 years the barriers of communication had been reduced to a greater degree than all years of recorded history combined. Between the mid 19th and mid 20th century, many new information technologies evolved which helped overcome mankind’s effort to overcome distance, time, and location. The three most important technologies during this time were the telegraph, telephone, and radio. The telegraph was first used in a practical way in 1845; it sparked a wave of communications development throughout the world. Samuel Morse, an American inventor, is credited with having developed the first operational model of the telegraph. Morse developed a system that employed an electromagnetic relay and regenerated signals over long distances. These signals were recorded as dot-and-dash messages directly on paper. In the United States, the use of the telegraph paralleled the expansion of the railroad system. The telegraph helped railroads communicate and function more efficiently, and railroads in turn expanded the American telegraph network, making it even more effective than it had been. Before the end of the century, communication in the U.S., according to one source, no longer relied solely on a physical infrastructure that "depended on the speed of horses, ships, runners, and railroads." It soon rivalled the national postal service in volume of service. The telegraph quickly entered widespread use outside the United States. As early as 1851, the telegraph expanded the internationalization of financial markets as it connected the London and Paris stock exchanges. By the end of the century, business interests and government offices throughout Europe were linked by telegraph. The telegraph transformed the conduct of virtually every business transaction and government action since messages were now sent rapidly and accurately over long and short distances. The introduction of the telegraph also had an extensive impact on military affairs. For example, during the American Civil War, the military used the telegraph to direct troops, relay strategic and tactical intelligence about enemy movements and actions.9 For example, one of the first uses of the telegraph during the Civil War was when President Abraham Lincoln sent a telegraph message calling for 75,000 troops to defend Washington. Lincoln received an immediate response via telegraph that 90,000 troops were ready. The telegraph also soon increased the speed of information flow between continents. Efforts to link Europe and the U.S. by telegraph in the form of submarine cables were successful in 1866 after a number of failed attempts. Instantaneous communication was thus possible between continents. By the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, then, the telegraph had made the world a smaller place. The telegraph had lessened the constraints imposed on communication by distance, time, and location to a greater extent than all previous improvements combined. This development was extended by the telephone The telephone is one of the most influential developments in communications history. The invention of the telephone is generally credited to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.Bell discovered a method to transmit sound and the human voice by electric current. Like the telegraph before it, the telephone had a profound impact on business, government, the military, foreign policy, and almost every other arena of human activity. Less than 25 years after its invention, the telephone was in widespread use in Europe and the United States. The growth of the use of the telephone was astounding and by 1939, the number of telephone calls in the U.S. exceeded the number of letters mailed. As the twentieth century progressed, the telephone became ubiquitous. In business, the telephone speeded transactions and enhanced communications even more than the telegraph. In government, its impacts were much the same. In military affairs and foreign policy, the telephone, like the telegraph before it, provided greater efficiencies through rapid person-to-person communication at a distance. In military affairs specifically, one analyst noted that the telegraph and telephone together "quickened the pace of warfare by shortening response times and increasing flexibility. By the early twentieth century, then, the telegraph and telephone had transformed human communications. Distance, time, and location still presented difficulties for communications, but the difficulties were by no means as significant as they had been only 25 years earlier. Nevertheless, communications were still constrained by location since both the telegraph and telephone required lines over which signals could be sent. Radio also known in its early development was known as the "wireless telegraph." In 1894, Guglielmo Marconi sent the world’s first radio signal over a three kilometre distance. At first, radio use was relatively limited because only Morse code could be sent. However, when Reginald Fessenden discovered in 1906 how to send voice and music via radio, the slowly expanding non-maritime use of radio became an avalanche. By the 1920s, over 600 radio stations broadcast in the United States alone. Other American businesses realized that the new technology afforded significant advantages, and radio was quickly employed to advertise and publicize as well as to entertain and educate. In 1943, money spent on radio ads for the first time surpassed the amount of money spent on newspaper ads. Throughout this period, the U.S. Government and the U.S. military played a major role in the development and use of radio. During World War I, the government and military used radio extensively for communications, command and control, and related purposes. Military use of radio expanded even more during World War II. Every major international actor in the war used radio extensively in all branches of their armed services. The radio gave commanders more flexibility with troops, allowed greater mobility, and enhanced overall command and control. Without the radio, Germany’s "Blitzkrieg" warfare could not have been implemented. Meanwhile, governments used radio to inform—and sometimes misinform—their citizens about the progress of the war, to promote nationalism, and to spread propaganda. Some analysts even argued that radio was the "paramount information medium of the war, both domestically and internationally." Radio also contributed to the Allies' war effort in its application to radar, an acronym for "radio detection and ranging." By the end of World War 2 the telegraph, telephone and radio revolutionised the twentieth century world. It had a massive impact on the way people lived and worked; on the way business and government operated; and on the way war was fought and peace was sought. However more highly significant developments in the technology of information and communication were to follow them in the twentieth century. Countless innovations occurred during this time, the most important of them being the television, the computer and the internet. Although it was invented before World War 2, television had no real impact on human institutions and activities. However, when TV took hold, its impact was immense. As a technology, television developed gradually. In the 1920s, Philo Farnsworth, Vladimir Zworykin, and Allen Dumont contributed significantly to its development. As TV quality improved and programming became more widely available, Americans led the way in buying televisions. The rapidity of television’s penetration of the American market was astonishing; in 1945, only a fraction of one percent of all American families had televisions, while 10 years later, the figure had leaped to 72 percent. Wherever it was introduced, TV had a dramatic effect on society and public opinion. Because of television, men and women saw people and places and heard ideas and viewpoints that earlier, they might never have seen or heard in their lifetime. Everywhere it was a medium for educating, informing, entertaining, and propagandizing. Television also had an extensive impact on business. In the United States, business advertising became one of the main ways to finance privately owned television stations and networks. TV's ability to reach diverse people thus transformed the way businesses approached marketing efforts. Television’s political role also grew immensely. By 1960, TV had become so powerful a medium within the United States that many analysts believed that the televised 1960 presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon won the election for Kennedy. Later in the decade,...