Another one from the Archives…
I have this theory that digital technology marks the turning point of human communication.
I don’t think it’s ‘a’ turning point – I said ‘the’ turning point. Theorists argue whether or not the internet is revolutionary. If they’re talking revolutionary in the sense that it’s turned things around so they start to move in the opposite direction, then I’m inclined to take the affirmative.
The history of communication has moved through seven main stages, as far as I can figure it. At the different stages, a human’s ability to communicate, for example, ‘something to do with apples’ would appear like this:
- facial expression and body language of hunger, perhaps some crying
- pointing to the apple and grunting enthusiastically
- saying ‘Would you mind passing an apple’
- drawing a picture of an apple, and a man pointing to his mouth
- leaving a handwritten note on the fridge saying ‘don’t forget apples’
- publishing a book about the health benefits of apples
- hosting a television reality show called ‘When Apples Go Bad’
Now, of course, there are places where those phases overlap, are extended or, in some cases are skipped entirely. Some social circumstances require an earlier form of communication – particularly when there is physical co-presence involved (stages 1 to 3). No need to type a letter to someone who’s in the room with you – often a simple gesture will do. However, these phases are additive. The ability to create movable type grew from, but did not replace the ability to draw phonetic characters on a page freehand.
Let’s give the phases convenient terms:
1) non-symbolic
2) gestural
3) verbal
4) pictographic
5) scribal
6) mechanical
7) electric
The logical thing to do on first inspection would be to label number 8 ‘digital’, and include in that category everything from webpages, email and chatrooms to compact discs, global positioning satellites and cellphones.
In fact, digital technologies are starting to take us down a path back the way we came, but without losing the knowledge of the ones before. It’s not number 8, but number 7 again, number 6 again, number 5 again…
We’ve been here before. We recognise the landmarks. We’re travelling the other way in a different vehicle, but the process is going to take a lot less time because we know the way.
We can already disseminate sound and video via the internet. The electric phase (7) is contained within the digital. We can mass produce typewritten text and so the mechanical phase (6) is absorbed. Handwriting recognition software exists on PDAs and other hand-held devices. There goes the scribal (5). Pictures are equally simple to convert to a digital mode (4).
It’s the stuff that was so easy first time round that seems to be slowing us up a bit. The stuff that used to require co-presence. We seem to be part of the way through folding the verbal (3) into the digital realm. Speech recognition software isn’t all it could be, but while we still have to type text into our computers, and read text messages back from them, the HAL9000 computer doesn’t seem as much like science fiction as it used to.
The term ‘virtual reality’ has been with us 20 years now. It still remains itself a virtuality – never quite meeting the expectations or delivering on its promises. However, a large proportion of software development advances over the past few years have been in the area of 3D graphic animation and image rendering (thanks in no small part to the gaming industry). If the next logical step in our progressive regression on the communication path is gesture (2), then that doesn’t seem like such a stretch either.
The man who coined the phrase ‘virtual reality’ also coined the term ‘post-symbolic communication’. By this he meant the digital mediation of what I’ve called the pre-symbolic mode (1). I stressed earlier that these phases were additive. As we develop new modes, we do not abandon the previous ones. Different modes have different strengths, and having a well-rounded pallette at your disposal enhances your ability to interact with other human beings.
Post-symbolic communication goes the last step. Computer-mediated facial expressions, body language and other emotional cues round off and complete our communicative abilities. It’s probably the toughest one to navigate. It’s a long time since we were last here, and we had no way of mapping the territory. It’s the area that depends most on physical co-presence, which is not something we’re terribly good at with computers yet. I’ll email my sister in Australia, but won’t bother with the PC if she comes over for a coffee when she’s back on holiday.
But the question arises – does the completion of the return down the path of these modes represent some sort of finished project? An apocalyptic ‘Completion Backwards Principle’? Probably not. Communication has always been and will always be a process. No matter how good at it we become, we still need to do it. At least until we actually become each other and know and feel everything everyone else knows and feels, which I have to say seems unlikely.
The point at which digital technology emerges (actually some 40-odd years ago now) is simply the point at which we start to return down the path of our communication modes. As such, it’s revolutionary. However, this belief neither represents a form of technological determinism, nor does it suggest that digital technologies are some form of cultural improvement.
Extolling the virtues of digital technology with disproportionate vigour all too often coincides with the abandonment of earlier modes. People who spend their lives online quite often end up socially backward, because they forget that it’s just one more extension of their ability to get on with other humans – and not a retreat from them. Virtual Communities, as Howard Rheingold calls them, extend rather than replace actual communities. And of course, we haven’t even begun to see analogue computing yet. Then I’ll get excited.