A brief history of conversation

Technology’s impact on communication is well understood, how it affects conversations has gone unsaid.

Since Johannes Gutenberg assembled the first printing press in the Holy Roman Empire in 1440; communication, and the very technology that enables it has seen a lot of changes. But while the revolutions that the telegraph, telephone, radio, television and the Internet brought have been well understood, their impact on conversation itself has largely gone unsaid.

Us and them

Back in the old days, before movable type, the easiest way to communicate was to hold a conversation — talk face-to-face. Since not many were literate, reading and writing were not really in vogue.

The only one-to-many means of communicating then were books arduously copied by hand, theatre; and of course, the official proclamations. One-to-many was closely guarded by people in power: Even Shakespeare’s plays were banned. A majority of communication then was essentially one-on-one, or simply put, conversation.

But after the advent of print, radio and television; one-to-many took everything by storm. There were now committees of editors, laws to adhere to, and the evil gatekeeper – the publisher that is. It wasn’t exactly easy for an individual to get his thoughts across using traditional mass-media.

Limited literacy had created a class of elites. The literates were the people with power, because they were the people to go to for getting letters written, read; or work of official nature done.

While it created the literacy divide, it also made society see the value in the principle of universal education.

The new elites

As technology kept giving us newer ways of communicating, mass media and literacy drove each other. For print, more literate people meant more circulation. It also gave a fair chance for niche and trade-related publications to thrive. But it also gave the publishing elites unfathomable amounts of power.

The fallout was slow, invisible, deadly and certain…

Conversations in the commute died prematurely so that the paper could be devoured. When television came along, living room banter was shushed so that Larry King could be heard live.

One-to-many was getting famously popular, and with it advertising and other techniques of creating demand gained traction. One couldn’t get better soup than Campbell’s, or a better men’s fragrance than Paco Rabanne. Sunglasses from Ray-Ban were the best. Together, the forces of mass production and mass media attempted to create a society that believed in artificial aspirations. And to a large extent, they succeeded.

While mass-media sponsored by mass-production did make taking the thoughts of an elite few to many more much easier; the individual’s voice faded and ultimately died an unfortunate death. The era of genuine conversations was over.

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life…

For the first time, producers and publishers found that consensus could be manufactured. Society itself began philandering with the idea that homogeneousness and material wealth was the only way to lasting peace and happiness. So much that in 1955, the economist Victor Lebow suggested, “Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life… that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”

The collusion between publishers and producers gave birth to an organism that wanted more readership, more influence, more power, and quite naturally more profits.

The old elites who could read and write had given way to the new – a chosen few who could produce and publish.

Mutual and vested interests of the limited elites had made sure that the free press died before it was even born. Had both, the US and the erstwhile USSR, made serious attempts towards a free press; the cold-war wouldn’t have started in the first place. Arguably, much of the maladies in the world today wouldn’t exist.

Whenever corporate and state agenda ruled, humanity as a whole lost.

The big bang

And then it began in 1995: The floodgates of the Internet opened…

Much before the graphical niceties of the Web came about, there was Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Email and the humble Mailing List on a multitude of topics. Also, there was this other pandora’s box of Usenet.

For the first time in many people’s lives, they were able to talk to real subject experts, have discussions, and participate in flame wars half-way around the world. When one was too unsure, there was always the cloak of anonymity.

By 1998, it dawned that all the megahertz, memory, the disk-space and number-crunching abilities didn’t really matter. The true value of the computer depended on how many; and most importantly, who were on one’s address book. Instead of Personal Computer, PC could have easily been the abbreviation for Personal Communicator – and it wouldn’t have mattered.

Interestingly, the very people that made hardware and the operating systems for PCs didn’t see the potential of the Internet immediately. Most of their early attempts were half-baked. As a result, news and other media organizations were handsomely late on the scene. This allowed Internet culture to evolve freely, without the influence of the state or big organizations.

What really mattered was that conversations started again. What’s more? People didn’t have to be in the same place at the same time. The Internet allowed geographically distant users to hold conversations minus censorship or control, at a speed that wasn’t previously possible.

Glued together with standard technical protocols, this then was truly the first social network. A social network without a name, a single company behind it, or even rules of engagement.

Advent of the Web

The modern browser with its graphical abilities heralded the advent of the Web. Initially designed for scientists to publish research papers; news and other media organizations started posting content online. Portals like Yahoo! started indexing them.

Publishing and producing moguls took the centre stage once again. You couldn’t blame them; their advertisers got more coinage this way. Or better still, a different set of advertisers paid them for the same content they carried on print, radio or TV.

Also, using the Web was now extremely easy. Point and click, rather than typing arcane commands from memory on strange-looking prompts. No wonder then the audience on the Web largely consisted of people that wanted things to read and pictures to look at. It isn’t surprising that many saw their first email in a Web browser rather than a dedicated email client.

And the advertisers? They got busy. The Web saw more PR professionals give out pre-packaged news to nubile journalists in corporate junkets. And thanks to the Web, a little money now went a long way.

Soon, for mass media and a lot of new users, the Web was the Internet. And it was for the taking. For many of these new users who were out to consume, the older ways of participating in conversations and discussions didn’t catch much fancy.

We Blog

The Web proved to be an excellent publishing medium not only for scientific research papers, news articles, corporate and business information, but also for daily diaries… Blogs really started as Web Logs – online diaries where bold authors would ‘log’ the highlights of their day. The diaries were open; anyone and everyone on the Internet could access them.

Of course, there was no rule that said that blog posts should only concern themselves with the day’s events. While a marginal few tried their hands at flash fiction, a lot of them posted links to important news stories around the world. Some went further with detailed analysis, opinions and reactions.

As computer resources became inexpensive many joined the bandwagon. Open and free software ensured that tools to publish such blogs were easily available. Services like LiveJournal and Blogger only added fuel to their growth. To start a blog, all one had to do was sign up. There was no software to install.

Just like the Web; blogging was now easy: Point and click. And with comments, conversations made a large-scale debut on the Web for the first time. By 2002 blogging had become the hype-du-jour.

As of 16 February 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence.

The number of blogs soon outstripped corporate Websites and news sites. The number of comments outnumbered blog posts. The people that were initially out to consume, had finally begun to participate.

Can’t beat them

Blogs didn’t make ‘important’ authors all that happy but. To wake up the next day and see one’s ideas and articles analyzed, commented on; and more often than not, arguments utterly decimated by bloggers is not exactly what many would call a ‘happy experience’. When greater number of journalists and columnists started getting roughed-up, their publishers had to intervene…

Reporters, editors and newspapers moaned and complained. They were losing power, position and their reputations. Traditional media had to prevail. “Bloggers vs Journalists” had become an all out war.

The common line in arguments against blogs was, “Anonymous people on the Internet couldn’t be trusted. The publishing houses on the other hand had reputations to keep.” What traditional publishers had probably forgotten was that corporate already had vested interests, and that most editors and journalists had sold their souls in junkets a long time ago.

But, the most important fact that publishers probably failed to consider was that the knowledge and wisdom of a few was no match for that of many.

While publishers and businesses kept getting knives to a gun-fight, bloggers continued to do what they did best. Collectively shaped conversations suddenly became more exciting and interesting than the next day’s paper. More reputations were now being destroyed overnight.

It wasn’t long before the Holy Roman Empire fell. The navigation bars on traditional news sites featured a separate section called ‘Blog’. Publishers had hoisted the proverbial white flag. Interestingly, the authors of these blogs were the very reporters and editors who were previously at war with the bloggers.

Victory however, favored corporate establishments more than independent bloggers. More comments on news sites were now moderated, read censored. Many companies now had ‘blogging policies’ for their employees. The era of institutionalized censorship had finally begun.

In 2006, when Google News came out; a large number of connected people predicted the death of news in print, and the regional coherence that mass media brings in general. Bloggers on the other hand, got an easy tool to measure the ‘slant’ that different organizations would give to the same story.

The social network

As blogs became mainstay, a new kind of Web application emerged. Instead of putting one’s daily diary online, this one expected you to put up your friends list. The site could be informal à la Facebook – for friends and family, or more oriented towards one’s bread and butter – like LinkedIn where one could link-up with colleagues.

Users hopped, skipped and jumped to join the network – not only to stay in touch with their friends; but also to send each other messages and share photographs and exchange notes.

Initially, most of these sites were invite-only and had a concept of a wall – a notice board where friends could put up interesting bits of information for you to look at. As a result, an individual’s activity on the network depended on his friends’ inclinations to post on his wall.

The pattern of communication was a total reversal of the blog’s broadcast model. While blogs allowed one to publish whatever, whenever and to whomsoever; writing on someone’s wall required more context and thought. Many such sites, including Orkut failed. Low vitality was the primary reason.

When Facebook started, they got the wall bit right. Instead of relying on the user’s friends to make posts to his wall, they encouraged users to write on their own walls. When Twitter started on a similar premise, they called it ‘micro-blogging’ — a post had a hard-limit of 140 characters. We know them as status messages; an answer to the question, “What’s on your mind?”

For a lot of time, the answers were essentially just that. They ranged from “Watching a movie”, to the mundane “Feeding the cat”. These statuses would be visible to all of the user’s friends. And the friends often made comments, asked questions and added to the discussion.

Unlike writing long treatises and missives like blog posts; users found writing short status messages multiple times in a day much easier. Conversation had become more natural.

Updates to one’s social network became more frequent. And as the number of friends in one’s network increased, the trickle of information and news from the network changed into a strong flood. And just like blogs, nothing suggested that the status updates really have to be status updates. Links to articles in the papers, information about events before they made news, interesting conversations elsewhere, raw reactions and everything in between saw their way to the status message.

The new social network was more encouraging for conversations, more real time; and somehow, more real life.

A bigger bubble

There is no denying the fact that conversation is important. Without honest discussions, arguments and debates, it is difficult if not impossible to reach well-tested conclusions. And social networks ensure that such conversations happen in good numbers. Today, the fates of books, shiny new gadgets, movies, even national policies and governments are all decided online.

And then there’s gossip: From strange and weird friends and facts, to the color of actresses’ underpants on a particular day — or even their abject absence. The human penchant for trivia ensures that there is an abundance of noise in the network. Thanks to the social network, needless information got newer avenues to run from one corner of the globe to another, while being analyzed to death along the way.

On the other hand, our lack of knowledge and fear for the unknown makes the social network amplify rumors and conspiracy theories as well. One popular theory that comes to mind concerns the end of the world: “The world as we know it, will end in about a year’s time. Simply because for some unknown reasons, the Mayans didn’t calculate their calendars beyond 2012!”

At the same time, big events like the earthquake in Japan makes us all run around sharing status messages and commenting virulently. While only a few are in a position to help the situation; we all emote.

For people in computing, the Internet is always introduced as network of networks. But increasingly so, the social network makes the Internet a network of people from all walks of life, rather than a super-massive glob of computers, cables and other devices. The Internet as a computer network has value only if people communicate and converse.

The social network has not only helped us find long lost friends, rekindle old connections and to know minutiae about them, but also widen our horizons. It has broadened our spheres of influence and added to our collective knowledge. They’ve enabled conversations at a time when they mattered the most.

We are here

Globalization made ‘global village’ a common term. Faster travel times created a market for more and similar goods and services. It is hard to find a city without McDonald’s, Pepsi, Coke today. While greater mobility bestows the traveler with more information, knowledge, and newer experiences; it doesn’t necessarily help the society that loses or gains the individual.

But unlike goods and travelers in a globalized world, the flow of information in social networks can’t be controlled efficiently. As a result, privacy and security become big issues. But when weren’t they?

In tightly knit communities and in villages, everyone knew everything there was to know about everyone else. Before mass production drove people to the cities in large numbers, big secrets in villages were hard to come by. Cities can afford closed doors and neighbors that don’t interact, villages can’t.

And just like in villages, in well connected societies one can’t always be happy about what people talk about, be it our families, religions, professions or the lives we lead. In the end, it is our desire for juicy details and differentiation that trumps.

The village’s openness created a sense of cohesion, acceptance and belonging which a city cannot match. Vertical cities can’t afford a large number of people coming together on a common horizontal ground. However, the social network does this virtually — it has succeeded in bringing the open atmosphere of the village to the city.

If living with like-minded people that share similar ideas and affinities contribute a greater share towards our happiness, social networks and the Internet have indeed contributed a great deal. Arguably, even more so than the material happiness that global trade brought.

Just like in villages, social networks have helped create shared experiences and shape a collective consciousness. This candid openness and transparency of the social network impinge us to be honest, to levels one may not be previously accustomed to, or even comfortable with. Whatever the nature of the voice, one-to-one or one-to-many; individuals, businesses and governments alike are finding the need to be able to stand greater public scrutiny than ever before. The Internet and Social Networks are now shaping a “Global Conciousness”.

As individuals, this openness makes us more accepting of other cultures. It makes us think. It makes us see and accept differences. It helps us learn and adapt quickly. It makes us choose the greater right for a bigger number of people. Most importantly, it helps honest conversation.

We are here. And we’ve just started talking.