Does the electrical telegraph annihilate space and time? On the surface, the answer to this question is an emphatic 'yes'. The electrical telegraph was the beginning of the modern world, with its insistence on the instantaneous and growing globalization. But it was merely an imperfect realisation of these aims. The codes used to transmit messages had nothing like the fluency of the written word that SMS and email can now send across the world, and of course are even further from simple human speech.
The answer I suppose is still in the affirmative, but it's certainly tinged in grey rather than a definitive black or white. The electrical telegraph did annihilate space and time, but they were to rise from their graves for the next several decades. The reliance on the direct line, the sneakernet and the system's essentially human backbone means that the telegraph was doomed to be overtaken one day by a far broader basis for communication - the Internet.
The telegraph does not easily allow for conversation - the time involved, although perhaps not the issues of space, means that messages can be delivered, but responses are complicated and any attempt at dialogue severely curtailed by the process of transmission and translation. We certainly discovered this during our own experiment with the electrical telegraph; once communication had been established, it was difficult to restart a message, explain our misunderstanding or even work out who was supposed to be speaking.
These issues are all easily communicated in human conversation and online by virtue of the instantaneous transmission and globalized practices. Formatting, shorthands, and tones of voice are all examples of the latter, and are used in messages from all over the world to every other part of it. There are no issues regarding international borders or extra difficulty in crossing oceans. The telegraph began to annihilate space and time, but it would take a few more developments before the nails were firmly in the coffins.
The answer I suppose is still in the affirmative, but it's certainly tinged in grey rather than a definitive black or white. The electrical telegraph did annihilate space and time, but they were to rise from their graves for the next several decades. The reliance on the direct line, the sneakernet and the system's essentially human backbone means that the telegraph was doomed to be overtaken one day by a far broader basis for communication - the Internet.
The telegraph does not easily allow for conversation - the time involved, although perhaps not the issues of space, means that messages can be delivered, but responses are complicated and any attempt at dialogue severely curtailed by the process of transmission and translation. We certainly discovered this during our own experiment with the electrical telegraph; once communication had been established, it was difficult to restart a message, explain our misunderstanding or even work out who was supposed to be speaking.
These issues are all easily communicated in human conversation and online by virtue of the instantaneous transmission and globalized practices. Formatting, shorthands, and tones of voice are all examples of the latter, and are used in messages from all over the world to every other part of it. There are no issues regarding international borders or extra difficulty in crossing oceans. The telegraph began to annihilate space and time, but it would take a few more developments before the nails were firmly in the coffins.
