World Communications Day celebrated this week naturally evokes questions about freedom of speech, censorship, the excesses of social media, the power of Facebook, Twitter and Google, and the most effective ways to persuade people. These are important questions about how we practice and regulate communication in a changing world. Behind them, however, are the larger and unchanging questions about why we communicate and about the effect of our communications on the way we live. World Communications Day is an opportunity to think about these basic questions.
Radical changes in the way in which human beings communicate do change habits and perception of the world. We can only wonder at the effect that the development of speech, with its shared sound symbols for things external to the speaker, had on human living.
We do know from historical accounts and from contemporary experience the effects of the development of writing, in which visual symbols corresponded to things and their associated sounds, had on human perception and habits. There was loss and gain. The knowledge and traditions shared by the community could be codified in words, communication at a distance was possible through letters, concrete evidence remained of transactions, and authority in society rested with the literate.
Later the printing press made possible the mass dissemination of books and pamphlets, the development of newspapers and magazines, and the path to universal literacy. The religious beliefs and shaping stories of society could also then be controlled and homogenised.
In more recent years the development of radio and television, with instant communication across distance by sound and by image, and of social media have further shaped human living. The importance of the image may have made less popular the habit of reading at length. It has enabled immediate personal communication at a distance, so lessening barriers of space and time. We can see in real time images of wars, famines and natural disasters around the world, with the result that we may grow in compassion or become desensitised to suffering.
It has also made it possible for individuals to find a mass audience without the mediation of newspapers or television, and has segmented audiences so that we are more likely to receive news and views tailored to our prejudices. Technologies of communication, too, are increasingly reciprocal. When we seek information electronically we also provide information about ourselves which can be collated, associated with other pieces of information, and used as