In the short film The Nation at your Fingertips, the narrator discusses the importance of the use of the telephone to society as a whole. It uses the city of Englewood as a case study, as the residents there have telephone use and use it as an integral part of their society, and are about to become (at the time of the film) an experimental case in the start of the use of long-distance calling by consumers. To frame the importance of this development, the narrator recounts the history of telephone use in the United States and how important it has become to many people for social and economic connections that would not be possible without it.
One reason that this film is relevant and informative to a 21st century class about the information society is that its overall point holds true today. The connection of people with the help of communication technology is very important to the way society runs today. The film states that the telephone "filled a void" in human life that involved social interaction with people whenever it was needed, but you can say that about many communications technologies even today, such as text messaging, social networking, video conferencing, and so on. Because of the connections that these technologies allow us to make, we have become dependent on them, and this film's discussion of the use of the telephone shows that the way we've become dependent on the technologies today is not new to society. Communications technologies tend to be important to the overall workings of any society.
The film is also interesting to a student of the information society as it shows a lot of the behind the scenes action involved in telephone operation, such as the work of operators and the elaborate punch cards used to determine telephone billing. Though maybe simpler to understand than some of the inner workings of today's communication technology, it was interesting (at least to me) to see just how complicated it was to run this technology that we take for granted today. This gets one thinking about the background of many other types of information technology, and how our "information society" today is not just based on magical information that is beamed to us by wizards, but is very technical and complex on the back end. The fact that long-distance calling is a novel idea in the film shows how intricate the workings of communication technologies are, despite their ease of use on the user end.
1 comment:
I completely agree with what you're saying. It's very interesting to see the complex background work of communication technologies. It gives a unique perspective of how complicated the whole system really is. I also found it interesting how the area code system (which is still in use today) was something brand new at the time and seemed like a revolutionary concept. In fact, the Milwaukee area code (414) that was shown in the film is still in use in that area today. Actually, many people i know have that area code so I've always taken it for granted myself and never thought it was that novel of a concept.
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