The Future of Communication

The Future of Communication — page 5
uring the American Civil War 1861 65 United States presi dent Abraham Lincoln did not wait for important telephone calls to update him on battles as the telephone had not been invented yet However he did set up a cot in an office with a telegraph the most advanced form of communications technology at the time Lincoln’s secretaries wrote that his thoughts by day and anxiety by night fed upon the intelligence information which the telegraph brought Whether it is working playing or waging war the things people do depend on how and how well we can communicate For cen turies the primary way for humans to communicate was through spoken words Then around 6500 B C people began using written symbols During a period called the Bronze Age the cultures of the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians developed complex alphabets and writing systems Writing represented an advance because the receiver did not have to be present at the exact moment the mes sage was being created Also it could be spread to multiple people Today people like real-time communication But thousands of years ago they just wanted a pen The first books and documents were written by hand Only a few people knew how to write and the process was long and laborious Then in the 1400s a German printer named Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press that used movable type Instead of having to write each document separately a person could simply move the type into place smear it with ink and press D C H A P T E R O N E C HAPTER O N E 1 MAKING A CONNECTION 6