A Revolution in Communications

The generation that used to place stamps on envelopes and place calls from a pay phone has given way to a generation that communicates largely by text messaging on highly advanced mobile phones. It’s a generation that uses the Internet to keep everyone in their social circle updated on a per minute basis on social communication websites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. No longer do we have to wait several days or weeks to send a communication by traditional mailing methods and then wait days for a reply to that message. Now every possible form of communication can be accomplished in seconds. From utilizing a wireless provider for texting services to using live video streaming services to broadcast to your co-workers the world of communication has never offered so many options.

In any revolution there are winners and losers. The losers in this new world of communication are those who are unwilling to adapt and who are seemingly stuck in the stone age of communication. These individuals are losing out on the ability to receive instant “as they happen” updates from thousands of news outlets. In November of 2007, Facebook users broke the story of the Mumbai, India attacks before any major news outlet knew about it. It is now possible to take eyewitness accounts of current events and transfer them to people in all corners of the world instantly! This is a clear indication that this revolutionized method of communication has grown out of its infancy and has enabled us to obtain information at a record pace.

Not only has the Internet revolution made it easier to receive updates from your friend’s busy lives as well as receiving world news in an instant. It’s also opening new gateways for the way we enjoy our leisure time. By this point we all know the trials and tribulations of peer-to-peer music sharing but in a whole, the revolution in communications has been a large success for the entertainment business. With services like iTunes, you can buy an individual song instead of spending money on an entire album. Not only does this save you money it helps the planet by reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills. Up and coming bands can afford to use live video streaming services to broadcast concerts from local venues to the computers of their MySpace Music fans across the world. This has opened up vast new landscapes for the starving artists in our world and has given them a new platform to succeed.

It’s hard to tell where the next big social media service will come from and it’s impossible to say what it will do to revolutionize the world of communication. Holograph images were recently used during pre-game broadcasting of the 08-09 Super Bowl and should be an indication of the future possibilities of communication. As we adjust and adapt to our new methods we will continue to expand, invent and conquer new more exciting methods to bring us closer to the world and the people around us.