Fidlers’ “Mediamorphasis” takes readers on a journey through the third great metamorphosis in communication – digital language.  The first two monumental steps in man kinds ability to communicate with one another was of course, spoken and then written language.  It is this third step that truly brings us together as a species.  We are no longer existing in our own pockets of civilization around the planet, with news of other far away lands simply trickling in and letting us dream in our minds about what these places could be like.  Because of digital language, we are now  “one homogeneous mass”, to quote Samuel Bowles.

The need for digital language arose from a need for communication across distance.  The construction of railroads (these play an important role throughout this story) led to an increase in social and economic development.  With this increase, it became clear that instantaneous communication would be needed to properly synchronize the moving of goods across these distances.  Enter the telegraph.  Previously, the quickest way for news to break was using various transportation such as the pony express to rush news to the newspaper presses.  With the invention of the telegraph, these were rendered obsolete.

Some of the critics of the telegraph questioned whether people would care about news coming from places they had never been to or cared about.  One such critic wrote that while we now has the means for Maine to communicate with Texas, there was nothing important to communicate between the two states.  This luckily did not stop the telegraph from catching on and there was sense of closeness brought to society as people found themselves connected to widely diverse states across the country.   The next step along this digital path was the telephone.  The transmission of human voice across large distances was of course met with shock and awe.  When people got over their fears and realized this was not some talking machine, the widespread realization of this mediums potential was realized.  Well, by most people at least.

Young Bobby Boucher: [flashback to Bobby's childhood] Mama, when did Ben Franklin invent electricity?
Mama Boucher: That’s nonsense, I invented electricity. Ben Franklin is the Devil!

When radio radio waves were harnessed to give rise to radio broadcasts, the medium (and the message) took yet another leap forward.  Unfortunately, this also gave rise to a necessary (yet annoying!) evil: commercials.  These were used to bring revenue into the growing radio stations, as the nation began to yearn for more forms of communication.  In 1921, over 300,000 people tuned in to listen to a boxing match and the ball was officially rolling.

With today’s Internet age in full bloom, radio seems a bit archaic when thought of as a communication device.  Amateur radio does still exist among hobbyist and enthusiast, and this proves very useful when national disasters or wars interrupt traditional means of communication.  These amateurs that do this despite the domination of news by huge media companies, seem to me to be a cousin of Internet social media users.  They are communicating amongst themselves beneath the notice of ever present news companies.

This amateurism is an important key in today’s digital age.  Benkler states that

“The Internet allows individuals to abandon the idea of the public sphere as primarily constructed of finished statements uttered by a small set of actors socially understood to be “the media” (whether state owned or commercial) and separated from society, and to move toward a set of social practices that see individuals as participating in a debate.”

We are not limited to self musings of the news that “the media” delivers us, we can now go on-line and converse among our peers from all over the planet, discussing news as it happens.  This is truly a  conglomeration of the many pieces that make up digital language.

Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press, 2006);

Roger Fidler, Understanding New Media (Pine Forge Press, 1997)