From the invention of the first commercial electric telegraph made in 1937; arguably the greatest development in communication – the physicality of messages changed forever. The concepts of time and information transportation evolved from messengers travelling for days across distances to the modern day instant online textual exchanges of messages. The progression into the modern day cyberspace has become the industrialisation of information transmission and processing whereby the internet is merely a platform to access the black hole that is cyberspace and technologies are the tools.
The concept of social networks is nothing new but they now extend beyond a small scale and are capable of structuring a large collective across multiple locations. The medium in which things flow, the content and the nodes among which the flows circulate have all dramatically changed. The medium of digital communication technology allows for the free flow of information by the nodes which are a hybrid of people and machinery.
The progression of communication has progressed through many stages to reach the wondrous level at which it operates now, incorporating faster communication speeds and smaller devices e.g. apple watch, google glasses. No one could predict the path in which it took to reach now nor can anyone see any clear direction as to where to from here. This gives rise to the question, ‘what next?’ Could such rapid advancements lead to artificial intelligence replacing humans like in the movie ‘Her’? Is Siri the real life Samantha? Only time will tell!
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