Kommunikation im 21. Jahrhundert: Alter Dialog-Wein in neuen Technik-Schläuchen

Abstract

Since the industrial revolution, our telecommunications technology has developed exponentially. We are now able to transfer huge amounts of data almost instantly between virtually any two points on the globe. A natural question then is whether, and if so, how, high capacity global telecommunication has influenced the way people communicate with one another. In this article I will use illustrative examples from the history of telecommunication to argue that it was not telecommunication technology, but rather the — much earlier — development of writing that caused us to change the way we communicate. While exchanging written messages allowed us to break the confines of space and time, we had to give up the prototypical way of communicating that we have been using and optimising for thousands of years: informal face-to-face conversation. The rapid development of telecommunication technology has mainly served to gradually recover the essential properties of informal face-to-face conversation, while retaining the advantages of being able to communicate without physical co-presence.