Although the film, The Nation at Your Fingertips, was made in the 50's during the postindustrial framework, it is useful because it outlines the way the telephone has developed and played a role in all three of the frameworks we have studied.
The first framework we studied was print culture. In this film, the daughter sends mail to her mother telling her that her baby has the measles. She is able to send this letter all the way from California due to the development of railroads throughout the country. As you can see in this film, letters were being replaced by the telephone as the mother decides to place a call to the daughter instead of sending another letter because that would take too long.
Next, the telephone also played a role in the control revolution and this is shown in this film. Since there is so much information that needs to be processed during this time, new technologies are developed to help control this information. In this film, the husband tells the wife that she is able to call California because it's only 8:00. The development of time zones helped people know when it is acceptable to place a phone call. Also, the development of area codes is described in this film because of the increasing amount of telephones in homes. It's interesting because I'm from the Milwaukee area and the film shows the area code for Milwaukee as 414 and that's still the same today.
Lastly, the telephone industry played a role in the postindustrial framework. In this film, it shows the switch from boys controlling the switchboards, to women as operators, and then machines fulfilling those roles. Also, the film describes the telephone playing an important role in long distance service so customers are able to call and get information. Lastly, the film ends saying, "The story of long distance dialing points the way to even better telephone service for you, tomorrow." This is the futurology that Daniel Bell describes in postindustrialism that can help us figure out what the future will hold.
This film is really resourceful because it uses the telephone to outline the three different frameworks that we have talked about so far in this class!
It is so weird to think that letters were sent to tell urgent things like shown in the video, whereas today, a text would have been sent and received in a matter of seconds.The telephone shown in the video took so much work for the company and was considered a luxury. I cannot imagine living in a time where I could not just go on my cell phone to talk to somewhere hundreds of miles away or finding information in a blink of an eye. Thank goodness for technology!
ReplyDeleteI am in awe at the fact that snail mail was used to send information that a phone call or text would tell today. I can't even fathom waiting for a letter, that would take 3-4 business days, after the incident happened in order to hear that a family member was sick. Even with the phone technology back then, it was portrayed as if they didn't use the phone to just call and catch up with someone, which is its ideal use today. I would have a really hard time with how long it takes for information to travel back then.
ReplyDeleteI thought this film was especially cool because it showed the shift from letter-based long distance communication to telegraph-based communication and eventually to telephone-based communication. I think an interesting point to pull from the film was this idea of "virtual space." Originally distance had been predominately measured by physical distance but with the use of electronic communication came the introduction of virtual space. Now people could make long distance phone calls and virtually be together even while technically miles and miles away.
ReplyDelete