Stages in the History of Communication
The following account of history is largely based on the discussions in Chramm(1998) and De Fleur and Ball-Rokeah (1989).
The stages in human communication are associated with the development of speaking, writing, printing, and the mass media( such as news papers, radio and television). The most recent stage is the age of computers. One of the most important consequences of the development of computer is that it has turned us into what has come to be known as the ‘‘information society’’. Because of the radical changes each stage brought about, these stages in the history of communication have also been termed ‘‘revolutions’’
The beginning of human communication
The story of human communication begins some half a million years ago with small groups of prehistoric hunters who lived in caves. These people did not walk upright and were physically incapable of producing speech. Although we have no records, scientists assume that their communication was similar to animal communication. That is, prehistoric people received and exchanged information about the environment (for instance, the presence of danger, or food) through their senses: sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. They also communicate with each other through gestures, posture, and facial expressions, and expressed a limited number of sounds such as grunts and cries. The inability to speak put limits on the ability of these early people to think and be creative.
Over time, climatic changes caused people to move out of the caves and settle in small communities. The need to communicate played an increasingly important role in their ability to participate in community life. The development of speech and language was the first major revolution in the means of communication available to human beings.
The age of speech and language
Scientists estimate that speech and language originated between 35000 and 40000 years ago among people who had evolved to physically resemble human beings today. Not much is known about the origins of speech. One view is that it was a divine gift. Another view assumes that, as the human speech organs developed, recognizable words gradually developed from the basic sounds emitted by prehistoric people, and speech and language evolved. What is important is that speech gave people the ability to think and plan, to hunt and defend themselves more effectively, to invent ways of preserving their food and keeping warm in winter, and to learn to cultivate the land. Over time they developed techniques for using various metals, and learned to weave and use the wool. It was during this era that people began expressing their creativity in the form of art and cave paintings that have been discovered in different parts of the world. The development of speech and language thus had consequences for both individuals and society. While the ability to use language did not cause great changes, it made possible the transition from a hunting way of life to an agricultural way of life.
The first agricultural communities settled along the fertile bank of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the shores of the Mediterranean, and the banks of the Nile River. As these agricultural areas grew and developed over the centuries, people needed to find ways to record such matters as boundaries and land ownership. As their towns grew in size and commercial activities and trading increased, they also needed to keep records of buying and selling, and other transactions. It was needs such as these that prompted the invention of writing in about 3500BC.
The age of writing
Writing had its beginning in the pictures and drawings that represented animals and people in prehistoric cave paintings. People gradually started combining pictures to convey more complex ideas, such as the sequence of a hunt. Later, the drawings of such pictures becomes associated with sounds. For example, the drawing of an ox becomes associated with the sound ox.
The first writing system using such pictures , called cuneiform, was invented by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia round about 3500BC. A great advancement was made when they realized that it was not necessary to use pictures to represent ideas. Instead, they began producing wedge-shaped characters on clay tablets. Each character was assigned a meaning. Later, they let each character stand for a particular sound rather than an idea. The advantage was that instead of thousands of characters that represent ideas-one for each thing and idea- only about a hundred were needed to represent the syllables that made up the words of a language. The cuneiform characters were refined into the letters of an alphabet. Each letter or sign stood for a consonant or vowel, rather than a syllable, and made it possible for a whole language to be written down using a limited number of signs. Today, we manage very well with an alphabet of 26 letters.
About 400 years after the Sumerians, the Egyptians embarked on a similar path producing a system of writing known as hieroglyphics, a series of pictures carved in stone, which told a story. Because they considered writing as an art form, they never reached the stage of developing an alphabet. As a result, their writing disappeared while that of the Sumerians developed and spread.
While the invention of writing allowed people to record and store information, the problem with hieroglyphics and the clay tablets of cuneiform was that they were difficult to transport. The first advances toward a more portable writing medium were made by the Egyptians who discovered the papyrus-making process in about 2500BC. Later, animal skins and parchment replaced papyrus, and paper was finally invented by the Chinese in about 100AD.
The importance of light and portable media, together with a system of meaningful written signs, is that it provided the conditions for far reaching social and cultural changes. Of prime importance is that it was no longer necessary to rely on the human memory to convey information and to pass the culture of a society by word of mouth. In Egypt, for example, papyrus was used to record the affairs of government and to write legal, literary, scientific, medical, and religious ideas. Libraries were opened, and schools were established to teach a class of clerks, known as scribes, to write. In fact, it was not until the invention of printing in the 15th century AD that literacy started to spread.
The age of print
The printing process is traditionally attributed to the invention of portable metal type by Johann Gutenberg of Mainz in Germany in 1450. Prior to this time, manuscripts and books were produced by craftsman and monks who copied and recopied them by hand- a slow laborious and expensive process. Gutenberg’s invention revolutionized book production. His techniques spread rapidly throughout the world and by the beginning of the sixteenth century, thousands of books were being produced. Newspapers also began to flourish and their circulation increased rapidly. While the early newspapers of the 17th and 18th century were aimed at the educated elite, the newspapers of the 19th and 20th centuries were designed to appeal to the growing numbers of literate artisans and merchants in the rapidly developing urban-industrial cities of England, Europe and America. The first newspaper to be published in South Africa was the bilingual Capetown Gazett and African Advertiser, which appeared in 1800.
The social significance of printing is that with the spread of books, more and more people learned to read and write, and their thinking was freed from the restrictions of church and government. New political and religious ideas began to circulate in society, and throughout Europe and America revolutionary movements emerged, disseminating their ideas to increasingly receptive publics. Particularly, with the spread of newspapers, public opinion became something that political leaders had to take into account. Although it came after book production, the great success and wide distribution of newspapers made it the first true mass communication medium.
The age of the electronic mass media
After the appearance and acceptance of the mass press, changes in the means of human communication occurred rapidly. Scientific discoveries and technological inventions during the 19th century( such as electricity and the telegraph) lead the foundation that would eventually lead to electronic mass media.
Towards the end of the 19th century, people were able to send telegrams and talk to each other on the telephone. Marconi invented the first ‘wireless telegraph’ which permitted signals to be transmitted without the use of electric wires. The 20th century is characterized by the invention of satellites, radio, television, and VCR.
Later, computers were invented. Initially, they were used for calculating and computing. Soon, satellites, telephony, and computers were brought together to form a network connecting people all over the world.
This international network or INTERNET with its world wide web has finally turned the world into a global village in the real sense.
Today, we use technological means to exchange, record, recover and disseminate information. What is of interest to communication scholars is how techniques and technology that made modern communication possible developed over the ages—in other words, the story of human communication.
- Enseignant: DJAMILA LADJALI