Many people these days take for granted that they can contact any person they want at any time that they want. You can call someone on their cell phone, send them an email, message them on a social network web site or even video conference with them. Being able to immediately interact with another person anywhere in the world is a staple of the technology era that we live in. Obviously this hasn’t always been the case.
There once was a day where people would write letters to each other and have to wait days or weeks to receive them. People used to have only a few channels on television for their news and entertainment and they were amazed by the footage they saw. Even before then, the radio was the main source for information around the world. These forms of communication only describe what has happened in our most recent history.
Hundreds of years ago, a person’s options were even more limited. People could send messages via telegraph and some entire towns did not even have one. You would have to send your message this way and someone would have to take the message to its destination, which could be miles away. Not a very efficient way to communicate, but it was the origins of many of the types of communication that you use in your everyday lives.
Learning the history of how we communicate will give you are greater appreciation for all the conveniences that you have in your life. Our recent ancestors were pioneers and every year we enhance what they started. We have come a long way in a short period of time and there is no ceiling for how high tech we can go. So next time you send an instant message, email or text, remember that it took a lot of innovation and work to get to where we are today.