Whats News in Science...Evolution of Communication

I decided to explore the ideas that have to do with the evolution of communication with humans. Thinking that we started to communicate just by forming one uniform alphabet that transformed into variations and translations so that we, as a world, could communicate effectively. One of the main points that came up continuously throughout my research is that social media is the now and the future. Cell phones just don’t do communication justice anymore, when people can use Skype to video chat instead. It does make many people worry that face to face communication will lessen as technology continues to evolve, but I had to ask myself, is that really that bad?

I didn’t really hear about this topic anywhere except for a classroom last year in the fall semester with Jeff Rutenbeck. It was the most interesting class that I have taken here at Champlain College. The class was titled “Mass Media and Society”. Throughout the semester the class talked about media in the past, present and the future. We got to see how Jeff actually lives the life that he teaches about. He is constantly involved in the media and how it is always changing. Last year we talked about how Facebook was going to be the newest craze for many years and even though that has held true, Tweeting has come up very close behind it. The focus of the class however, was how we, as a society and a world, have evolved in our ways of communicating with one another. Humans look for the easiest and most quick approach. Snail mail is no longer efficient when technology allows for emails and paying bills on-line. This is how and where I got the starting point for me research.

When that class first started, I thought that it would be another repetitive course about how people in the world communicate efficiently. I was sorely wrong. When it comes to communication, I could talk about it for endless amounts of hours. I am constantly using AOL Instant Messenger to keep in touch with friends, I Skype with my Dad every day, I am texting furiously to my friends and of course I have to admit my love for Facebook. All of these great technologies allow for faster and more efficient communication. Even though I find the ideas fascinating about how we have progressed, I must also admit that I still write letters and use the deadly “snail mail”. The first source that I used for this research was a website that allowed me to see the progression of communication and technology starting in the 31^st century. Even though this isn’t the most well known source, it still gave me great insight that I did not know before. I think that it is great knowledge to have about how humans found more and more effective ways to communicate over hundreds of years. The creators of this website knew that it would be strictly informational and set it up in a simple outline so that readers could get the information that they were looking for.

The second source that I used for my research was a better-known source, www.nytimes.com. I found an article that caught my attention because it focused on Facebook.com and how it is catering to what some of its users wanted. This is interesting to me because Facebook.com started off as a very simple forum for people to communicate and keep in touch with one another. Very soon after, the website was filled with thousands of different applications for users to download to make their page more unique and self-expressing. Well now Facebook’s creators have decided to put out a newer version titled “Facebook Lite”. This is a version of the social networking sight that only uses a smaller bandwidth to use because it is not as involved as the original Facebook is now. I found this to be important to my topic because as I mentioned earlier, communication started out very simple but if you wanted to converse with someone, you had to conform to whatever the “communication style” was. Now it seems that it has flipped around the other way. Now the communication is conforming to whatever the user wants and/or needs. By coming out with this new version of Facebook and allowing users who do not have the same bandwidth as many others may have, it opens up doors for the company and now they are available to a whole new audience. If other communication technologies catch on to this trend, which knows what will come out next. In order to keep up with AOL instant messenger and Skype, Facebook has already come out with Facebook Chat and it is planned in the future to have a Video Chat application on Facebook as well. Social networking is the future of communication, and I can say that with no doubt in my mind. I was taught in my Mass Media and Society Class that new media never replace old media, which is very true, but old media will fade to its lowest possible count. Newspapers will slowly go from paper to completely on-line, landlines for telephones will be on their way out and iPods already have cameras built into them. Using the New York Times website as a source for my research is very comforting because I know that it is a credible course and it is always full of interesting information. There isn’t really a specific audience that the newspaper is trying to reach. There are so many different sections that reach various types of readers and the technology section just happened to catch my eye for this project.

The news in communication evolution was presented efficiently in both sources but in two completely different ways. The first website which gave me a timeline plainly showed me the evolution of communication and technology in a timeline format while the New York Times article wrote about how Facebook as a technology has begun to cater to what its users want and need in order to maintain and grow its user base. Both sources are great and allowed me to further explore the past present and future of communication. When it comes to accuracy I cannot choose one over the other but when talking about credibility, of course www.nytimes.com comes out on top. Even though I fully stand behind the other source that I used, the New York Times is well known and has a fabulous reputation for honesty and reporting true facts. With both sources helping me to further believe in my ideas about this topic, the science does seem sound. This is because the ways that people communicate with one another has changed so fast over time and is continuing to change every day that we live. Something new is always coming out that is newer and better or better quality or in high definition.

This topic is important to me because I am a part of the generation that will start to use these techniques to communicate more efficiently in the work world and in every day life. Yes, businesses are starting to use Facebook and Twitter, but in the next two to three years, there will be a huge boom in the communication field. I’m sure that something better than twitter will come out to help scientists spread their information quicker. That is another interesting point about why this matters to me. Since we can correspond with one another in a much more direct manner now than ever, the way that information is spread will surely grow and expand to something even more than just tweeting about a discovery or the results of an experiment done by a scientist. Giving scientists the opportunity to communicate so rapidly has made a great change in science these days and I can only imagine how this growth in communication will help us, as a people, in the future. I do believe that this idea is revolutionary because it is making a change every day. Social Networking is the future of personal communication, and I can say that without a doubt in my mind. This matters the most to me because it affects my life on a daily basis. This topic may seem boring on the outside, but once you deep down a little bit deeper many will realize that this really is important and that it is in charge of what we do in the future. May it be with our jobs or our personal lives, communication is key in any society and who knows where this scientific revolution may lead us in the future. Where will we be on this evolution timeline?

To find out more about my sources look below:

Facebook Lite Article

Historical Timeline

Annotated Bibliography

Works Cited
"Communication cartoon -." Google Images. Web. 09 Oct. 2009. . This was a very helpful source for this image because it came up with something that I was looking for in the first search. I will continue to use google.com/images to look for images because it has not let me down yet. It is quick and effective.

Ensha, Azadeh. "Facebook Lite: Same Great Taste, Just Fewer Calories - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com." Electronics and Gadgets - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com. The New York Times, 11 Sept. 2009. Web. 09 Oct. 2009. . This article was a great second source for me to use for my research because I know that it is credible. I have used The New York Times website for previous research and have found no flaws. This article was short and to the point. It helps to strengthen my view on this topic of communication growth.

"Google Image Result for http://library.thinkquest.org/27887/images/pagers.jpg." Google Images. Web. 09 Oct. 2009. .
"Some Dates in the History of Communication Technologies." WorldHistorySite.com: World History in Five Epochs. THISTLEROSE PUBLICATIONS, 2005. Web. 09 Oct. 2009. . This source was incredibly helpful in giving me the necessary dates and names that I needed in order to have a full historical timeline. It was simple and straight to the point. Even though all of it was great information I did not use all of it because that would have been an overload of information for the audience to take in. I chose specifically which topics to put in my presentation because I only needed the ones that affected communication. I would use this source in the future because it was helpful, organized and informative.

Young, Robert. "The Future of Social Networks – Communication." GigaOM. 9 Oct. 2006. Web. 09 Oct. 2009. . This website was very interesting to me. I had never used it before, and reading what this man had to say was very interesting to me. I decided to use a blog post as one of my sources because I am talking about communication and how it has evolved, and using a blog for the first time was very new and interesting to me. I do wish that there were some more links to related articles for research purposes, but for the use that I needed it for, it was perfect.
"YouTube - 1971 - Touch Tone Phone Calling." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 09 Oct. 2009. .
"YouTube - AOL Commercial from 1995." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 09 Oct. 2009. .
"YouTube - Education Connection Commercial Jingle." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 09 Oct. 2009. .
"YouTube - Old windows commercial." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 09 Oct. 2009. .
"YouTube - Retro Commercial - Radio Shack Cell Phones - 1990." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 09 Oct. 2009. .
"YouTube - Wedding Reception eHarmony Commercial." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 09 Oct. 2009. .