Hey guys, here's a research paper I wrote about Electronics Communications and, more specifically, instant messaging. This is way too long and formal for a blog post, but I figured it'd be nice to share. Here goes:
In the 1956 novel The Naked Sun, author Isaac Asimov envisioned a futuristic world where people would very rarely communicate face-to-face; instead, they would communicate with each other from long distances through holographic images. While society today has not quite reached the level of holograms, it is slowly inching toward this seemingly eminent future. Communication has grown from its primitive stages of merely face-to-face conversations to the ability to instantaneously connect with a person across the globe. After the advent of industry and electronics, the rapid growth of telecommunications—information transfer over various technologies—thus ensued, and the traditional methods of communication were replaced by their high-tech alternatives. Between telegraphs, emails, text messages, and instant messages, this relatively short period of time has given birth to a wide assortment of new technologies, each advancing the world of communication. Of these, instant messaging has exhibited particularly rapid growth, and through its multifarious uses, could potentially be a key player in the communication of tomorrow.
Communication began in its more primitive form as simply face-to-face speaking and has evolved into the wide-stretching telecommunications of today. Early communities were forced to work together—and thus communicate—in order to survive. As time went on, a written language was created to keep records and facilitate long distance communication. Letter writing became the norm, and efficient long distance communication had been achieved. This increase in distance, however, came at the expense of response time. Letters written and sent out would require weeks and sometimes even months for a response. As technologies became more sophisticated, each subsequent installment in the evolution of communication sought to achieve one of two criteria: increase the communicable distance or decrease the waiting time necessary for feedback.[1] As this evolution unfolded, letters became telegraphs, telegraphs became faxes, faxes became emails, and now, emails are currently becoming text messages and instant messages, where communicative distance is nearly infinite and feedback time is nearly instantaneous.
The shift from spoken to written language created a rift between the two variations of a single language. Writing provided many new luxuries to communication, a major perk being increased durability of the message. From a historical context, letters were far more efficient than human messengers in long distance communication in that a written message would not in any way be distorted. Likewise, even in present-day, emails and text messages preserve messages much better than telephone calls. On the other hand, writing is not quite the same as speaking. The written word naturally comes as more formal and structured, whereas the spoken word is naturally more spontaneous and nonchalant. Josef Essberger of EnglishClub.com dissects this dichotomy into simple terms: the spoken word is the true language, and the written word is simply a representation of the true language.[2] For example, learning to speak is nearly automatic, while learning to read and write is a difficult skill that must be taught—that in itself supports the idea that writing is simply a representation of speaking.[3]
As the world stands today, society has adopted telecommunications as a vital part of its typical communication, employing primarily email, text messaging, and instant messaging. For years, business owners have heavily integrated email into their companies. Anita Campbell of smallbiztrends.com explains that in 2007, over 80% of small business owners saw email as a key to their success.[4] However, recall Naomi Baron’s theory on telecommunications.[5] When applied to email, the theory shows that email is still not an ideal means of communication because while communicable distance is nearly infinite, feedback time is still not instantaneous.
Thus, this has given way to instant messaging. Instant messaging fits Baron’s theory to its finest—nearly infinite communicable distance and, as the name implies, instant feedback. Companies still rely heavily on email, however, and the nearly ubiquitous BlackBerry-sporting businessmen are a testament to this. As instant messaging matures in the world of telecommunications, it will likely integrate deeply into the business world. Leslie Walker of The Washington Post has found that nearly a third of business owners are adopting instant messaging and are making a concerted effort to gain business value out of it.[6] While the long term business uses of instant messaging are still uncertain, it has already crept into the practices of certain large companies. For example, many companies now offer an online instant messaging alternative to traditional call-in customer service. Instant messaging in this case retains the immediate feedback and long-distance communication as with call-in customer service, but it also entails more punctual messages in that typical barriers to communication—accents, misunderstood words, etc.—are eliminated.
Of course, the better known uses of instant messaging are the day-to-day communications between teenagers in particular. Spawning from the early days of AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger, instant messaging between teenagers has produced the infamous LOLs and BRBs that are now all too common in written speech.[7] Pew Internet & American Life Project’s Amanda Lenhart polled teens on the topic of instant messaging and found that they are partial to the technology because of the informality of it.[8] This fusion between the written quality of email and the casual quality of speaking brought instant messaging to the mainstream. Dr. Yifeng Hu and her peers from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication have brought to light the relationship between instant messaging and personal relationships.[9] They found that, contrary to popular belief, instant messaging actually promotes intimacy between people. This is because frequent conversations online create a greater desire to meet the person face-to-face.[10] This thinking has since been implemented into the multitude of dating sites on the Web, bringing together the social side of instant messaging together with the business side previously explained.
Over the years, instant messaging has proven itself to be a major player in the development of telecommunications within the past decade, but its future remains in question. As explained earlier, instant messaging can be viewed from two perspectives—a business side and a casual, social side. From a business perspective, as Leslie Walker stated, business are seeking to better integrate instant messaging into their companies to seek profits.[11] From a social perspective, instant messaging has made long distance communication fast and efficient, and its devout users have brought their own acronym-based flare to the English language. However, the future is a bit uncertain. Since business owners are keen on the use of instant messaging, a sudden disappearance of it is highly unlikely. The capricious use of various day-to-day telecommunications brings a bit of uncertainty to the future of instant messaging. As technologies continue to evolve and improve, social networks are beginning to offer instant messaging features, blurring the boundaries of social networking and instant messaging, and thus making accurate statistics difficult to obtain. Another important issue concerning instant messaging is the advent of text messaging. As mobile phones have become smarter and more capable, text messaging has taken the best qualities of instant messaging—large communicable distance and short feedback time—and bundled them together along with mobility. In Amanda Lenhart’s study, she found that 54% of teens texted, while only 24% used instant messaging software (bear in mind this number is likely slightly skewed due to aforementioned blurred boundaries with social networking), perhaps indicating a shift in communication preference.
Technology as a whole has greatly impacted communication among people; however, the greatest growth of communication has come fairly recently with the advent of electronics. Written telecommunications—email, instant messaging, and text messaging—have taken the front stage; however, the dichotomy between speaking and writing still keeps phone calls a close competitor. Nevertheless, whether spoken or written, the future looks to entail less and less face-to-face interactions. Even by just 1998, Michael Kinsley, editor of the Microsoft interactive magazine, was surprised when he joined the team to find that hearing the phone ring was a rare occurrence.[12] Today, with growing numbers of teens owning cellphones and text messaging and instant messaging on the rise, face-to-face interactions seem to be on a lifeline. As time progresses, technology will undoubtedly continue to impact communications and bring about new means of communicating with one another. Perhaps Isaac Asimov truly was a fortune teller in his 1956 novel, and one day in the near future, face-to-face interactions will indeed become a thing of the past.
1. Naomi S. Baron, “Instant Messaging and the Future of Language,” Communications of the ACM, 48, no. 7 (2005): 29-31, accessed November 5, 2011, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wie/teaching/masters/newtech/readings/im_and_future_of_language.pdf
2. Josef Essberger, “Speaking versus Writing,” EnglishClub.com, last modified 2001, http://www.englishclub.com/esl-articles/200108.htm
4. Anita Campbell, “Email Right to Privacy—Why Small Businesses Care,” Small Business Trends, last modified June 19, 2007, http://smallbiztrends.com/2007/06/email-has-right-to-privacy-why-small-businesses-care.html
6. Leslie Walker, “Instant Messaging Is Growing Up, Going to Work,” The Washington Post (2011): URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54261-2004Sep1.html
7. Naomi S. Baron, “Letters by phone or speech by other means: the linguistics of email” Language & Communication 18 (1998): 133-170, accessed October 17, 2011, http://american.edu/cas/lfs/faculty-docs/upload/Letters-by-Phone-1.pdf
8. Amanda Lenhart, “Teens, Cell Phones and Texting.” Pew Internet & American Life Project (2010), accessed October 18, 2011, http://bcsdcybercrimes.com/Documents/Teens,%20Cell%20Phones%20and%20Texting.pdf
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