The Irack

A brief History of communication

This video as the title says,is a brief history of communication, it starts by showing us how people use to communicate through face to face communication and finishes by showing us how people communicate today via computers and smartphones.
Communication is an essential thing in the development of mankind, since the dawn of time humans have been searching for ways to communicate faster and more precisely. Let's travel back in time, as we said before mankind could only communicate by face to face contact, and now we can communicate with people thousands of miles away with just pressing a button. But from one to another what happened? Men learned that by drawing on walls they could transmit messages and keep them there for a very long time( e.g. we can still find today in some caves drawing from cavemen). Then men trained pigeons( and many other birds as hawks) to travel hundreds of miles to take a message which made messages more intimate and the author could choose who would see the message. After this , humans created smoke signals which where a lot faster than pigeons but less discrete. Man then changed the history of communication with the Morse language. With the Morse code men could secretly transmit messages (and this was like all forms of communications are at first, a military project) secretly and at a very high speed and best part is that these messages are coded so the enemies (in military cases) could not know what the messages meant even if they intervened them. From the Morse code which you could only send letters came the telephone booth in which the first time ever , you could have a instant voice conversation with someone miles away. From that was invented the radio in which a person could make thousands of people hear him, which was replaced in the television where someone could make people watch things and hear them. After came an invention which could seem a throwback but is actually a machine which let people send pictures and documents almost instantly , this machine is called the fax. And finally the two most used machines nowadays where invented, the computer and cellphones which now evolved into smartphones because they give us all the qualities of a cellphone combined with the ones of a computer.

Communication is so important and nowadays we can communicate with whoever we want and even when we want and almost for free, just by having an internet connection at home we can Skype with anyone we want around the world as long as they also have an internet connection and a smart device which let's them access Skype. We can also share pictures and any type of document we want with anyone we choose. That is the biggest advantage of technology nowadays , thanks to it's development we can now cover the two issues of communication, which are for it to be fast and discrete as before communication was either fast or discrete and that caused lots of problems.

To sum it all up, I think that the video was very well done because it was very simple but in the same time shows very well the history of communication and the fact that the video is short is just shows us how fast communication has evolved and how fast technological progress is.  

WHEN TECHNOLOGY IS TOO MUCH... OR MISSING

WHEN TECHNOLOGY IS TOO MUCH OR... MISSING

MY COMMENTARY ON BOTH VIDEOS

 

Description

This video is structured around two main narrative voices and a character illustrating what the voice-over says while a singer often merely repeats or comments on what's just been said (as in a Greek chorus).

The setting is a Christian home and church, so this particular context is very meaningful. We can also see the man at work, by doing this the video shows us the usual places where an american usally is, at work, at home and finally in church.

We can notice on various occasions that the main character is addicted to high-technology products, mostly smartphones.

He is shown as a family man unable to communicate with his wife, except through texting.

He is also shown as a church-goer incapable of attending worship without all his phones vibrating all the time, making him look like he's full of the holy spirit.

Finally, he is depicted as a computer geek whose life has become extremely complicated instead of having been simplified. 

 

Interpretation

Basically, this video means that high technology has become a religion for many people, even Christians who are not supposed to be materialistic.It is a humorous way specially with the voice over or for example when the man write to several people on different phones to exaggerate and to show the abuse of technology which is used on excess. 

Then, in a Christian lifestyle, quite a few church-goers and believers tend to focus more on materialistic issues rather than spiritual ones.

We can add that technology reigns supreme for many people who revere it as a God enlightening his followers.We have lost human contact because the guy prefers texting his wife than talking to her face to face. There is no longer communication that is not virtual, we do too many things at the same time, we live in a virtual world. This document shows and talks about the idea of progress. We are part of a generation that lives with the new technologies and it can be a bad things if we dong use it correctly, they create addictions and dissociate men from their families,friends...

The question is, is this a real progress for humankind ?

 

 

2

 

Description

Two people are stuck on an escalator in a place that seems literally empty/deserted which is really wierd because they seem to be in a mall and if they really are in a mall there are two nonsense because first there are always people in malls and because people don't go trought a mall to go to work. The man looks upset/annoyed. He might be an office worker walking to his job. The woman claims that she is already late, so for her, this is the last straw. At one point, she's about to cry and asks for a phone, then she screams for help. In short, they both look helpless, clueless, powerless and even hopeless.

 

Interpretation

 We can relate this situation to a fairly common one in real life : getting stuck in an elevator. The difference however, is  that in this situation, people have the right to panic/freak out/feel panicky whereas on an escalator, there is no reason whatsoever to be scared.

This video points out the increasing dependence of human beings on technology. If it goes missing, it is as if a crutch had been taken away from them, so these two people cannot even walk up the stairs, which would be the normal thing to do. We could think that technological progress makes humans lazy or at least less prone to take initiative and think by themselves, less inclined to make efforts.

The Fanatic Geek

The cartoon above is called " The Fanatic Geek" . It was drawn by  Patrick Chapatte in 2008 and was published in the International Herald Tribune. This cartoon deals with the issue of technological progress which can interfere with the movie business.

The first thing we spot in the cartoon is the caricature of a fan getting an autograph from a movie director or an actor ( also caricatures). Then we see the speech bubble with the quote :" I love your movies. I've pirated them all! ". We can also see a Cannes logo in the top left corner with underneath it written "CANNES". On the right we can see a police officer retaining fans from going on the red carpet on which the star is, with his partner and one fan. Also on the left we can see two stars saying goodbye before entering the inside of the festival and finally we can see some journalists on the center left taking pictures of the stars.

With this cartoon the cartoonist wants to criticize the fact that because of modern technology everyone pirates movies and watches them for free instead of going to the movies. The fact that people don't go to the movies anymore has an impact on the movie business ,which is very negative. The cartoonist wants in this fun way to make people become aware of the fact that what they do ( which is illegal) is also killing the movie business.

The cartoon is very well designed and carefully thought-out but I think it's not convincing because people just don't care anymore, and people don't want to pay 10€ to go see a movie ( let's not include snacks & beverages) when they can just watch at home for free and they can even pause and start the movie whenever they want. But it's not the cartoonist's fault that the cartoon is not touching enough it's just that people nowadays have a different way of thinking than they had in the 20th century. Bottom line I don't even approve the message because the movie business is never going to stop and even if the fact that people pirate their movies , the movie business is as good as always and stars are still as rich as always so money is not the problem. With that said I still think that a good movie should be seen at the movies not only for the visual and audio quality but also for the good old times.