Introduction
Communication is a mechanism by which the existence and development of human relations becomes possible. It includes facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, writing, printing, telegraph, telephone and the latest achievements in the conquest of space and time. In the life of any person, communication occupies one of the first places in importance. Communication is an important condition of human existence and the foundation of joint human activity. At all times, a person’s satisfaction of their needs occurred, as a rule, with the use of communication. Therefore, it is essential to determine how people in the modern world would do without online communication and what impact it has on society.
The Role of Communication
Communication is primarily an exchange of information, and, therefore, it is an integral part of the life of the modern world and modern society as a whole. Communication allows an unlimited number of people to receive various information, using it for their personal or economic purposes. At the same time, Internet communication allows people to transmit text, sound, image, video. Humanity is accumulating information at an ever-increasing pace, the bulk of data already accumulated has exceeded the volume amenable to simple human perception (Putri, and Irwansyah, 2020). Arrays of newly created information are transmitted so quickly that a person cannot and does not have time to perceive and process them. Mass communication today covers all spheres of human activity and social relations: starting from communication between relatives and friends, ending with the management of large enterprises (Deuze, 2021). Communication plays an important role in the lives of citizens. For many years, humanity has been striving to accelerate and increase the volume of conveyed information, and each new stage has become a new milestone in the development of communication and human history.
Development of Society
At the earliest stage of the development of society, man used various means of communication. Man, as a social being, constantly sought to interact with other people. To intensify the sphere of communications, it was necessary to travel long distances and he had to look for means of transportation used to establish message with people located at a certain distance. Perhaps the horse was the very first most actively and effectively exploited means contributing to the faster establishment of mass communications. The rider, overcoming relatively long distances, established communications with a much larger number of people. The invention of the wheel and its application in the construction of the cart allowed to increase the number of subjects seeking to establish external public services (Deuze, 2021). The desire to improve the means of communication has led to the creation of all kinds of vehicles, aircraft, including space systems.
The Intensification of Communications
Subsequently, the intensification of communications required the invention of means of it that would allow the required communications to be carried out without public contact. So, through a system of sign signals (flags, bonfires – within sight; sound signals – within hearing), communications began to be carried out at a distance (Dadelo, 2020). To increase the distance within which it is necessary to establish targeted one-time communications, such individual means of it as a messenger, a messenger were used. In order to expand the spheres of remote message and turn them into mass communications, postal communication was invented, which provided a sufficiently mass address communication between the communicating elements of the public system. The telegraph, invented in the XIX century, marked the beginning of a new era of mass communications (Deuze, 2021). With the creation of a system of telegraphic communications, the speed of it has increased a thousandfold, and most importantly, the number of participants in outgoing relationships – communicants has sharply increased.
The Global Communication Network
With the invention of radio and its introduction into the global communication network, the speed of information transmission in the communicative exchange reached the speed of light. Information and this means of communication became mass: Increasing the mobile properties (unsteadiness, wireless devices) of telephone sets at least another 5-6 times increases this possibility. Television, immediately becoming a mass phenomenon, made a new breakthrough in increasing the speed of information transmission to the mass audience and the bandwidth of the communication channel by 550 thousand times compared to the telegraph (Trenholm, 2020). The volume of information transmitted from the source of communication to the recipients of the communication system has increased dramatically. Feedback from the recipient to the source of information is carried out through a system of letters, telegrams, telephone calls, faxes received on television.
The First Failure
Interactive television has turned this information transmission channel into a full-fledged network of two-way intensive communications. This stage of human development marks the end of the Gutenberg era (Freelon and Chris, 2020). Although in all subsequent periods of human growth, printing continues to play a huge role in the development of human culture. Audiovisual message (especially in its non-interactive stage) is fraught with many dangers, violations and obstacles that arise in any link of such a communicative system and sometimes leads to extraordinary consequences. The tragedy that the Americans experienced at Pearl Harbor in 1941 due to a failure in the communication system could possibly have been avoided, if not two disruptions in the information transmission system (Trenholm, 2020). The first failure occurred when intercepting the message “Winds”, which reported a planned attack. However, the top military leadership did not pay attention to the intercepted information.
The Introduction of the Internet
Until recently, computers were a personal means of processing and analyzing information. Today, with the inclusion of the Internet in the global information network, computers have become the most powerful tool for inclusion in the mass communications system. The introduction of the Internet opens a new era in the development of communication. The world “information web” today has neither physical, nor geographical, nor administrative-state, nor censorship borders (Trenholm, 2020). The information space is “overwhelmed” by the “fourth wave”, which simultaneously increases the intensity of communications and begins to limit interpersonal communications and transfer them to the virtual plane.
Conclusion
Thus, communications have a significant potential for society, which is due to both the development of public communication systems and the improvement of technologies for the transmission and dissemination of information. Now the effectiveness of communications is ensured only if they are complex and integrated. That is why in the future its development will be conditioned by the complication and increase in the amount of information, as well as its structuring and reliability requirements. In addition, cross-border message for society means the opportunity to contact and exchange information between representatives of different peoples. At the same time, increasing responsibility for the disseminated data will reduce the possibility of misleading social groups or society as a whole, as well as engaging in harassment while on the other side of the screen.
Reference List
Dadelo, Stanislav. (2020) ‘The analysis of sports and their communication in the context of creative industries.’ Creativity studies 13.2, 246-256. Web.
Deuze, Mark. (2021) ‘Challenges and opportunities for the future of media and mass communication theory and research: Positionality, integrative research, and public scholarship.’ Central European journal of communication 14.28, 5-26. Web.
Freelon, Deen, and Chris Wells. (2020) ‘Disinformation as political communication.’ Political communication 37.2, 145-156. Web.
Putri, Andhita Vidya, and Irwansyah Irwansyah. (2020) ‘Communication patterns and media technology role in organization and society during pandemic.’ The Journal of Society and Media 4.2, 228-261. Web.
Trenholm, S. (2020). Thinking through communication: An introduction to the study of human communication. Routledge.