Webberm’s Weblog

The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage was an interesting and fun read about the history of the telegraph, from its simple beginnings as a technological curiosity, to its rise as the preferred mode of communication of for thousands around the world, and finally to its slow decline as it was eclipsed by the latest technological curiosity the telephone. Standage tells a great story using the unique pioneers of this invention as its main characters. There was Samuel Morse who is credited as the father of the telegraph. There was William Cooke the British co-inventor who was really just out to make his fortune. There was Charles Wheatstone, the true scientist and partner to Cooke, although he really didn’t like being associated with such dilettantes. Above all of them were the powers that be, government, business, and the future, all of which, at alternate times, sought to suppress, support and finally surpass the telegraph.

Standage points out that the history of the telegraph is similar to the rise of the internet. It is with this understanding that one can critically examine two themes from The Victorian Internet for parallels to modern society, the invention of the telegraph as the starting point of an ongoing revolution in communications and the potential that each new invention has for bettering society. First and foremost, the revolution in communications that the telegraph launched is in fact still revolving with the widespread use of the internet. It certainly didn’t end when the telephone was invented, or when radio or television came along. With each successive technological breakthrough in communications and information processing we must redefine how and what we communicate but what makes the telegraph important is that up until its invention, our communications processes were essentially unchanged for thousands of years. The printing press had an impact to be sure but the pace of communications hadn’t really changed since the time of the Egyptians. Since the invention of the telegraph however the pace of our communications as well as the pace of our inventions has increased. For example, the printing press was invented in the 1430’s,and it would be another four hundred years before the invention of the electric telegraph. The telephone was invented only 40 years after the first commercial telegraph was put in use, by William Cooke, and the first radio broadcast, at that time called wireless telegraphy, occurred about thirty years after the telephone. Television as we know it today was invented in 1927, only twenty years after the first radio broadcast, and cellular technology that would eventually lead to cellular phones was invented in 1947. The year before, in 1946, ENIAC was invented, which is considered by many to be the first electronic digital computer and of course the first computer network, which was the precursor to the internet we know today, was first tested at MIT in 1965, 19 years after ENIAC. The inventors of each subsequent innovation were looking for a better way to communicate and they based their experiments on the technology that came before and the telegraph was the genesis. For that matter the use of electricity as power source stemmed from the invention of the telegraph and that contributed to another revolution the industrial one. The development of modern business practices and multi-national corporations owe their existence to the telegraph as well. Today we view the telegraph as quaint but in truth we wouldn’t be where we are without it.

We also tend to forget the telegraph was regarded during it peak, as the technology that would bring world peace. Ironically, the same has been said of the telephone, radio, television, computers and the internet. Standage makes a point of chastising each new generation for being too optimistic about how technology will solve world problems. In some ways he is right that each new invention came with new problems and old foes, such as the aforementioned government and business, however, why shouldn’t we be enthusiastic about the latest and greatest innovations. In a sense the new technology provides us with a do-over from our last attempt. Revolutions root word is revolve and that means to go around, or more importantly to come around again. Each time it comes around we have the potential to let the better angels of our nature guide us toward a better society.

That is the ultimate point of The Victorian Internet, that we are in the middle, not the end, of the communications revolution that started with the telegraph and therefore the message we should take away after reading it is that this revolution will continue to allow us infinite chances to get it right.