Summary: I found the essay topic “Networking Now and Then” very interesting. However, I had some difficulty researching on the topic. After spending sometime on the research I found some sources that helped me in writing the essay. Overall the topic was interesting.
Reason: The reason we were given the topic “Networking Now and Then” was for us to do some research and find the difference how we communicated back then, and how we communicate nowadays. The essay topic gave us an opportunity to educate ourselves, and learn how we progressed over time.
Purpose: The purpose was to educate ourselves and improve our researching, and writing skills.
Direction: I wrote the essay by comparing different eras throughout the history, and how communication changed with the time.
Impression: As I learned how little people communicated back then, and how difficult it was, It made me realize how we have progressed, and how technology is playing role in our everyday life.
Part 2:
Looking back on historical and traditional manner in which people exchanged the news, information, ideas, and gossips have dramatically changed over time because of the invention of technology(Nathan Ensmenger). Back in the days it was very hard for people of different communities to communicate to each other. Newspaper or flyer was common in sharing information within a community. Printing Press would publish the information and scatter them in town or city. People would read the paper to find out what’s going on around them, that’s how people were used to get updates(Nathan Ensmenger).
Postal Service is one of the very old system of communication between people living in far away cities and towns. It would take many days for people to get the response back. Telegraph was also one of the old system through which people communicated but latter on in 1876 Graham Bell Introduced telephone which was very big and astonishing invention(Mary Bellis).
Overtime, the technological advancements have dramatically changed the way we communicate nowadays. Today, people have phones which they can carry with them all the time. Whenever there is an emergency or if they would just like to talk to someone they just dial the other person’s phone number and talk all day along. In rich and developing countries almost every person have phone. Large number of people are subscribing to cellular phones in the United States. Currently estimated 82.4% of the people are subscribed to some kind of cellular service (Mary Bellis).
Late in 20th century e-mail was a new invention (Ian Peter). E-mail is an electronic mail by which people can send a message, weather it is in a form of letter, document, or photo, in seconds. It is an easy and fastest way to send the files online to a person sitting 10 miles away or 10,000 miles away. Almost every professional person uses e-mail to send and receive the documents. Alone on yahoo there are over 100 million people are e-mail active users(Ian Peter).
Today, Facebook is one of the few popular web sites which people use to communicate and share their ideas. People who have very few friends in real life, they have hundreds of friends on Facebook. We can easily share our photos and updates on facebook. There are around 800 million active user on Facebook. Among the active users, there are 350 million users who access their Facebook through their mobile devices(Facebook statistic).
The way of communication between people have changed and improved overtime as we discovered and invented new technology. Nowadays, social web site are an important and popular way of communication.
References:
Bellis, Mary “The history of the Telephone-Alexendra Graham Bell”. http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventors/a/telephone.htm
Ph.D. “History of Communication”. April 4, 2006. http://www.fi.edu/learn/case-files/communication.html
Facebook statistic page: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
Nwahs. “Seven Steps to Finding the Best Cell Phone Deal”, 03-22-2008 at 12:13 PM. http://www.cellphonesignal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2956
Peter, Ian “The History of E-mail”. http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/email.html
