BEYOND ELECTRONICS: A SPECULATION ON A NEW MEDIA AGE
Eugene Marlow · ETC.: A Review of General Semantics · 2009
It is general perception and concomitant consensus that on this planet we live in so-called age. In print and electronic media era we live in is also referred to as of The first definition of is not quite accurate. Certainly, there are all appearances of in our environment--gadgets of all of kinds, and communications and technologies. But this is also appearance. As it has been said, fish cannot tell it is in fishbowl. The second moniker is, of course, not entirely accurate either. It feels like of because an avalanche of surrounds us, or rather inundates us. The truth is, and even a cursory review of history will show, people in nomadic tribes, agriculturally-based villages, city-states, nations, regions, and now international societies have always relied on information in one way or another for survival, sustenance, and strength. The processing of is in our DNA. After all, even DNA is all about information. To take a long view of human species' communications evolution, Homo sapiens and all his predecessors have moved through several stages. The first is body language. Then, about 1.8 million years ago, nature saw fit to move voice box further down throat, apparently creating a more efficient physical relationship among voice box, tongue, and mouth (including lips that keep mouth from fraying at edges). This physiological adjustment allowed for development of emitted sounds of greater complexity and, thus, spoken language. Hence, beginning of of orality. About 5,000 years ago, as a way to keep track of economic transactions, early antecedents of present accounting profession devised tokens that eventually evolved into early writing systems. Then, in mid-fifteenth century, Gutenberg introduced his printing press and of efficient printing was born, accelerating European Renaissance and eventually Industrial Revolution. In 1844 ad, Samuel F.B. Morse commercially introduced telegraph and electronic was launched. It is my contention that a little more than a hundred years after birth of electronic age, shortly after World War II, we entered yet another age in communications evolution of Homo sapiens, this one based not on electrons, but on photons. To put it another way, we have already entered of light, or what I am calling the photonic age. The use of light technology has spread silently into various aspects of society. And, as Marshall McLuhan has stated in Understanding Media (McGraw-Hill, 1964), Once a new technology comes into a social milieu, it cannot cease to permeate that milieu until every institution is saturated. This is true of orality, writing, typography, electronics, and now photonics. The evidence that we are now living in an of photonics is all around us, even though it is not readily apparent. One can find photonic technologies in many aspects of society, including medicine and science, military, education, finance, live and electronic entertainment, and consumer electronics. And many of these photonic technologies are not only becoming more present, they are also replacing older, more familiar technologies. The National Academy of Engineering points out: From surgical instruments and precision guides in construction to barcode scanners and compact disc readers, lasers are integral to many aspects of modern life and work. But perhaps farthest-flung contribution of 20th century's combination of optics and electronics has been in telecommunications. With advent of highly transparent fiber-optic cable in 1970s, very high-frequency laser signals now carry phenomenal loads of telephone conversations and data across country and around world. …