Media, Communication, and Society
Importance of Language
Oral Cultures
Telecommunications
Importance of Language
lThe Gospel acc’g to John: “In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
lThat which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.
l--Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet II, ii.
Contemporary Examples: Education
lVocabulary Tests—most common method for judging intelligence.
lArgots / Jargons of professions
lReports / Letters of Recommendation / Report Cards (?)
Contemporary Examples:
Games
lChildren’s language “play”
lNumber of language Games: Crosswords / Searchwords / Hangman…
lGames in my closet: 10 Language games out of 22 total
Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy. (London: Methuen, 1982)
l“Fully literate persons can only with great difficulty imagine what a primary oral culture is like, that is, a culture with no knowledge whatsoever of writing or even of the possibility of writing.” (28)
Noetics
lThe transmission and storage of knowledge.
lCulturally determined.
lInfluenced by Media?
Primary Orality (Ong)
lLanguages first are oral.
lLanguages are “Mother tongues”—learned while in womb, at breast; therefore, experience language along with world.
l3000 oral languages (1978 estimate)
Sound and Interiority
lSound is temporary
lSound is personal.
lSound is interior: Check substance (“soundness”), assoc. with Life
lSound (and sign) not media.
Comm. In Oral Societies
lAlways face to face.
lAlways a context--often a ceremony
lIn groups: Audiences are listener /participants
lEpic narratives with Heroes as characters
lUse of formulae and sayings.
l“Filing Cabinet” memories. E.g. million verses of Epic poetry
Iliad of Homer
l“Sing, Goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son, Achilleus…”
lLists, Chronologies
lHeroes and vivid violence
lFormulae for rhythm
lPerformed orally, but eventually written down
Illiad of Homer
l“The hero spoke like this, and bent the heart of his brother since he urged justice. Menelaos shoved with his hand Adrestos the warrior back from him, and powerful Agamemnon stabbed him in the side and, as he writhed over, Atreides, setting his heel upon the midriff, wrenched out the ash spear.” (Book Six, Illiad, Trans. Lattimore, R.)
Innovations in Writing
lDevelopment of scripts--3500-3000BC (cuneiform, hieroglyphics= pictographs, ideographs)
lSyllabaries.
lHybrid languages.
lSemitic Alphabet. (1500 BC)
lGreek Alphabet.
Telecommunications
lObservations from reading Atlas?
lCareer Glimpse: Bend Phone Book:
lTelecommunications--13 pages
lTelevision--4 pages
lRadio--2 pages
Mechanical Telegraphs
l1793 French telegraphe. 21 mile message. Different signaling method using rotating beam.
l1796--British Admiralty--Six shutters in various combinations. 63 miles (code kept secret)
Electric telegraph
l1837--Cooke and Wheatstone’s Telegraph patented.
lUsed for British Railway
lWomen preferred as operators.
Underwater Cable
l1850-1851--Cable, wrapped in rubber, then with steel shield
l1857-1866. Attempts to cross the Atlantic.
l1866. Daniel Gooch. buried a pair in between Eng. and Am.
lPictures of transatlantic cables: http://collections.ic.gc.ca/cable/index.htm
Worldwide Network
lThe First Information Highway?
l1875--network. Centered in England.
lBoon to commerce, trade
lDavis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World. New York: Verso, 2001
Writing about India and England in the 1870s:
Londoners were in effect eating India’s bread. “It seems an anomaly,” wrote a troubled observer, “that, with her famines on hand, India is able to supply food for other parts of the world.” There were other anomalies.” The newly constructed railroads, lauded as institutional safe guards against famine, were instead used by merchants to ship grain inventories from outlying drought-stricken districts to central deposit for hoarding (as well as protection from rioters). Likewise the telegraph ensured that price hikes were coordinated in a thousand [Indian] towns at once regardless of local supply trends. Moreover, British antipathy to price control invited anyone who had the money to join in the frenzy of grain speculation. “Besides regular traders,” a British official reported from Meerut in late 1876, “men of all sorts embarked in it who had or could raise any capital; jewelers and cloth dealers pledging their stocks, even their wives’ jewels to engage in business and import grain.” (26)
Telephone
lTelephone “obsolesces” Telegraph.
l“Retrieves” spoken conversation.
l“Enhances” distance.
Telephone Entrepreneur
lSosthenes Behn
lSampson, Anthony. “The Buccaneer.” The Sovereign State of ITT.
lITT an unusually early aggressive company. The early version of today’s common multinationals.
Sosthenes Behn
lSugar broker in Puerto Rico.
lFluent in languages
lEnded up with phone company through absorbing a debtor’s assets.
lDeliberately named IT & T to be confused with AT & T
lSided with combatants during wars so that IT&T would come out ahead regardless of winner
Sosthenes Behn
l1967--30 years later--ITT got $27 million in compensation from the US govt. for war damage to its German holdings--the airplane manufacturer.
lFirst FCC legislation aimed against him (1945)
Sampson, Anthony. The Sovereign State Of ITT New York: Stein and Day, 1973.
“It is important to put Behn’s Nazi sympathies in perspective. Countless American industrialists believed until the last possible moment that Hitler and Mussolini were good foe business and had only limited territorial ambitions. Behn had more excuse than many of them for condoning the dictators. His international System of communications was, he maintained, by its nature a peacemaking influence; its survival depending on accepting each local regime; and he could not afford to be too fussy about his friends.” (32)