Kristen
Donahue
26 November
2012
A Shadow in the Midst?
Much of the media are not new, but
have grown over time. Over time new ways
were discovered to communicate to another by means other than word of mouth or
a letter. From speaking face to face, to
sending and receiving mail by a bird or a post man, to Gutenberg’s printing
press, to the radio and television, communication has evolved. Because of this evolution, some of these older
means of media may be becoming obsolete, becoming left behind by the shadow of
new technological advancements.
The era of the Roman Empire was
known as the Classical Era, where much learning and knowledge was gathered and
kept. After Rome collapsed, Europe experienced what scholar Petrarch
referred to as the Dark Ages. A big characteristic of
this time period was the lack of literary records that could define the era
after the "extinguishing of the light in Rome." It is a
dark period in history because of the grim events associated with the time
(plague, smallpox, superstition), and also because of its dark "hole"
in what we know because of its lack of documented records. During the Dark
Ages (6th-13th centuries), much of the media disappeared
due to lack of the spread of knowledge and ideas. Books, essays, theses, and new ideas that
generated during the time period were not documented for us to read centuries
later, as has been the case with the centuries preceding and predating the Dark
Ages. Even centuries ago, a world where
knowledge and literature were not documented, a world with few media, was a
dark time. It was not until the
Renaissance and later the Enlightenment that some of the light of Rome brought
the knowledge and flow of ideas back into the world. These “lights” are directly associated to the
media. The more the media, the brighter
the world; and the invention of the printing press brought knowledge to light,
and made the spreading of knowledge to the masses easier and much faster.
Since the printing press, there have
been several new ways of communication that have made easier the ways in which
people spread knowledge and ideas. The
big five are print, film, radio, television, and the personal computer
(PC). Print has been around for
centuries. Words and symbols have been
recorded to advertise events and sell products, and as a way to communicate the
news, what we now call the press. Film,
or a movie or motion picture, may not feel like something new to us, but is
actually still a bit new development to the media. Despite that plays and dances can be traced
back hundreds of years, in the late nineteenth century, a series of many images
was first able to be projected onto a screen.
By the 1920s, the screen became a television, allowing many images to be
transmitted electronically into a mechanical box. Along with these developments was the radio,
the transmission of electromagnetic radiation through the frequency through
space. Finally, the personal computer
came about in the 1960s. Today, it would
most likely be considered a programmable calculator compared to the many
different kinds of computers available today.
All of these are media we still use today to communicate many different
things. We still see newspapers, books,
magazines, comic books, and many other forms of print. The radio is widely used as a music channel,
but still communicates news and information relevant to the kind of station it
is. The television and PC are both the
most recent media of the five, and are very influential tools to communicate to
the masses, as they are now commonplace objects in nearly every home. All of these give news about politics,
advertisements, local events and news, and much more. They are used daily, and have a very strong influence
on every person who listens.
Despite the fact that all of these
inventions are still present and very relevant to our time, one invention has
become so powerful that it has cast a shadow on several other media: the
internet. With the internet, things like
print, radio, television, and even film can all be accessed on your PC at a
faster, more convenient rate than ever before.
It also gives the individual the power to choose what they want to
watch, listen to, or read, without being crowded with other options or forced
to sit through commercials and songs you do not like. Now, it is easier to simply find what one
likes and access it with the click of a button. This one invention has been able to combine
all media into one portal, or a gateway to accessing many different media
simultaneously. One way of suiting a
portal to your needs is through cloud computing. The cloud allows for easier access to
applications and information by the masses.
With the cloud, a company could provide all of the software and
applications via the internet in one place, which is easier than having to
install each software program on every computer individually, for example. Although the internet is a relatively new
portal (become popular in the 1990s), it has had the power to transform the
media into a one-dimensional archive.
Nearly everything can be accessed online, from your favorite TV shows, to
the latest news story in Egypt. It has
all been combined by the advances of technology.
There have been several key
inventions that have dominated the mediums of communications over the last one
hundred and fifty years. However great
they may have been at their inception, they seem to now be becoming lost in the
shadows of a new technology that is narrowing down the ways in which we
communicate. Despite the many ways and
networks to communicate with another, the internet has become the main portal of
communication in the twenty-first century, leaving behind the technologies of
old, and making room for new possibilities for faster, cheaper, and more
convenient means of media. Where can we
go from here? I wonder…
