(Meaning "networking" in the broadest sense, including the communication technologies (practical tools) that serve to connect people, as well as some of the design involved.)
Trying to weave together strands of communication technologies...
and feeling a bit overwhelmed.
Above: Wampum belt Delaware Indians gave to William Penn at the "Great Treaty" in 1682. The Eastern Woodlands Indians wove belts of wampum (clam shell beads) to seal treaties and to record cultural and historical events.
Above: The Instructor, or American Young Man's Best Companion Containing Spelling, Reading, Writing, and ArithmetickGeorge Fisher, 1786, Published by Isaiah Thomas, Worcester. "Take Great care and you'll Write fair."
Above: Telegram from Abraham Lincoln, 1864, to Mrs. Lincoln, telling her he's sending her money and, in response to their son Tad's inquiring after his health and the health of Tad's pet goats, he says, "the goats and father are very well––especially the goats."
Above: Mail slots for the Goldfield Hotel, built in 1908 during the gold rush in Nevada, photo by Scott Haefner 
Above: Announcement of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology
Above: Dungeons and Dragons Character Sheet (D&D was first published in 1974)
The original Apple I computer motherboard (1976)._______________
Sometimes, there're even people, after a fashion:
Above: 1957
Above: 1961, from Vintage Computers
THIS. ESPECIALLY THE GOATS.
ReplyDeleteI feel overwhelmed just looking at these.
(good luck?
Hey, "if you can't do it, no one can!")
The teletype - wow, that's very in-depth. We don't have time or room for that kind of patient explaining of a product anymore. Slogans and jingles!
I saw an eerie ad yesterday for the company Esurance:
"people when you want them; technology when you don't."
O.o
Wow. Analog computer. I guess there was a time that wasn't a contradiction.
ReplyDeleteMore wow. I just wikied what an analog computer even is and found out my beloved human sundial (or any sundial) is considered an analog computer. As is Stonehenge. In fact, you could consider all of Manhattan an analog computer for fixing the dates of May 28 and June 12.
M: That slogan is truly frightening!
ReplyDeleteI know Apple does explain its products once you get online, but to walk into one of there stores---whoah---no explanations at all.
No tidy lady at a desk, no text, no reassurances to the printed-text generation.
C-CAR: That's why this topic is so overwhelming--almost everything humans make could conceivably be considered communications technology!
The first mail slots I sorted mail to were like the ones from the Nevada PO.
ReplyDeleteBy the time I became a postmaster, almost all mail boxes were metal...almost, but not every one. Some of the smaller hamlets in out of the way parts of the country still have the original wooden boxes.
Cool post, Fresca.
:)
Patterns! So many patterns and grids and interlocking matrices...I am reminded now of Ada Lovelace and the first computers being made like looms, weaving information.
ReplyDeleteYes, D&D has a certain appeal for people who want to see human interaction as semi-random grids of probabilities. I always had friends who wanted to roleplay and other friends for whom the game was a thin veneer of dragons laid over the real appeal--numbers and charts and graphs and statistics.
Overwhelming but very cool.
JEN: I've wondered if the reason I don't like games is because I don't enjoy the pure mathy patterns.
ReplyDelete(Nor, really, the fantasy elements.)
I also don't like competition--the psychological stress of it.
Reading about gaming I was not surprised to learn that chess and other games has their roots in war strategy.
So. That's three reasons I don't like games. But I like reading about them! (Story of my life.)
P.S. I wonder if someone's done a study of the grammar slip-ups in blog comments. I make errors I would never otherwise make, e.g.,
ReplyDelete" chess and other games has their roots" .
CROW: I always wanted to work at the P.O.!
ReplyDelete