Week 5 - The Victorian Internet

As I read Standage's The Victorian Internet, I was amazed at how much the ascendance of the telegraph in the 19th century mirrors the rise of the Internet in the 20th. Like many innovations, telegraph technology was utilized for something other than its intended purpose. And, as with many innovations, it was misunderstood by many. Sending messages to distant locales over wires must have seemed like magic to those with little scientific expertise. The long line of inventors and scientists who contributed to its development had a hard time convincing the government, the military, and the general populace to adopt it for widespread use, but when it caught on it spread like wildfire, and became as ubiquitous as mobile phones are today. In the heyday of the telegraph it was used to order military maneuvers, to conduct business, to send money, to order clothing, to maintain relationships and to solemnify marriages. It created a new careers and a new subculture with its own rituals, in-class and its own vocabulary. Its early adopters and developers hailed it as the holy grail of its age, an invention that would connect distant cities, countries and even continents, and lead to world peace as all of humanity joined its wires together in a network of global communication.

As with many inventions of innovations that catch on, the telegraph was immediately set upon by the government in an attempt to regulate its use. It spawned codes and special language as people tried to bend telegraph messages to their purposes As with all technology, people soon found ways to put it to nefarious purposes. Cheats and scammers attempted to get ahead by using the telegraph to commit fraud. It wasn't all bad, though. Some of what the telegraph's far-seeing creators forecast did come true. Widespread use of the telegraph did connect distant communities and governments, and made the world a whole lot smaller. It enabled anyone with a message and a dollar to cast their words and intentions out into the world. The Internet does and is so many of these same things.

I didn't know much about the telegraph before I read Standage's book. I didn't realize that the popularization of this technology is so much like the rise of the Internet. I found the last few chapters of the book particularly prophetic. Standage seems to indicate that, inevitably, some new technology will come along that will improve upon what we once thought of as cutting edge. It's already happened. A long line of further developments and improvements have already made Internet protocols of the 80s and 90s seem old fashioned. The telegraph rose to social height until it was rendered obsolete by new technologies like the telephone. It's not hard to imagine that the Internet could follow that same pattern, that although we couldn't imagine anything more useful today, something will come along that will make it a thing of the past.

A lot of young people I know, teachers and others, like to be early adopters. They stand in line for the newest iPhone model the minute it's available. They feel, like Morse and others did in the 19th century, that the next new technology will improve their lives immeasurably, and be a panacea for all our modern problems. The problem with this view is that it neglects to take into account the human element. The invention of the telegraph may have shaped the landscape and the way we communicate, but it didn't change human nature. People who sent telegrams may have used a different communication mode than they had in the past, but what they were communicating stayed the same. There will always be gossip, business, romance, greed, news, narcissism. Whether these emotions, urges and ideas are transmitted over a wire or posted on Instagram, the basic human needs they serve are universal.

I think this has a lot of important implications for educators. The telegraph solved a basic human problem - the need to transmit messages more quickly and a wider distance. It's important to remember that technology is always changing at a blistering pace, but human needs and urges change very little. If we approach new technologies with a critical eye, and realize that none is a cure-all, but rather the latest chain in an endless line of human innovations, we can begin to educate students to solve the very oldest problems in new and innovative ways. Then perhaps one of our students will have the skills and expertise to conjure up the latest life and world changing "magic".