DON.KIMBERLIN@p6.f889.n106.z1.fidonet.org (DON KIMBERLIN) (01/14/90)
BB>> bbs's..perhaps a point for COSUARD! Is SWBT being so commercially
BB>> crass they would hinder the well-stated need to get Americans
BB>> up to computer speed? (You said it real right, the way it hit me.)
BB>
BB>I think the earlier point about illiteracy is better.. If FORCES you
BB>read! Lots of stuff.. Hundreds of K of stuff.. Millions of DUPES...
BB>(No, my fingers are running away with me now...)
..Dupes? UH-oh, folks, I think he's talking to me! (should we continue
this elsewhere, my patient and finger-tired Sysop?)
..In a more COSUARD-y plane, here's a hostorical observation on "the
phone:"
The fledgling Bell interests of the early years were on the edge of
financial failure for about 20 years, you know. At the time when the
phone arrived, the most powerful comunications medium, and indeed,
one of the most powerful businesses on the globe was the Telegraph
company. EVERYbody who was ANYbody sent telegrams.
It should be here noted that Alexander Bell did not conceive of a
bell on the phone. You'll see that official Bell histories make
much of his invention of the word "halloo" as a calling signal on the
phone. Bell only thought of it in the way the British had blown over
the end of a Victorian speaking tube to signal a call, hence the
British slang for the phone, "blower." It was L.M. Ericsson who
connected a magneto generator to the line and put a nice, civilized
tinkling bell on the phone. (Of course, Bell histories neglect this
point, just the way all propaganda omits things that might water the
power of their story.)
At any rate, the fledgling Bell companies were reduced to giving
phones away to try to get people to use them. Western Union for a
time persued developing the phone, but one day after observing Bell's
fiascoes for a decade or so, decided it was never going to gain
acceptance with the business community, so abandoned its efforts.
What DID happen was that the waves of immigrants who landed in the
ghettoes of NY, Boston and such of the 1890's found that the "phone"
had a saving grace...you did not need to be literate in English to
use the phone! They could establish their own sociological networks
on the phone, when the Telegraph company refused to handle anything
except a written note in English.
The phone mushroomed in the ghettos of the large cities. Those
1890's pictures you see of the overladen crossarms of wires are the
non-literate immigrants of the ghettos being the major users of the
new technology.
..So, the phone has a point that runs counter to our current need to
increase literacy. It is a technology that promotes illiteracy!
..How about THAT one, bbs'ers?
. EZ 1.24 . Safety Harbor Institute of Technology
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