Citations:
Bower, J. L., & Christensen, C. M. (1995). Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave. HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW. 73 (1), 43.
Rogers, Everett M., (1995) Diffusion of Innovation, Fourth Edition, The Free Press, New York.
Standage, T. (1998). The Victorian internet. New York, NY: Berkley Books.
I like this book. Through series of engrossing stories, it brought me back to the 19th century, unfolding a colorful network world which ever freshly existed more than one hundred years ago. Talking from the invention of telegram to its development and demise, this book deepened my understanding of the process of the human telecommunication evolution.
It looks like an never changing truth that there is always a handicap in front of the technology pioneers, whether in ancient times or present, no one can be exempted from this predestined fate. While Morse spent several fruitless months trying to attract support in continental Europe, Cooke began his demonstration through a niche market; both of these inventors fell through to get the approval and support from their governments. Moreover, this contempt and neglect not only from the government, but also existed among the masses.
Even though the use of the experimental Washington-Baltimore telegraph was free, members of the public were quite content just to come and see it, and watch chess games played between the leading players of each town over the wires. But the telegraph wasn’t regarded as being useful in day-to-day life.
According to Rogers, “an individual plays a relatively passive role when being exposed to awareness-knowledge about an innovation.” The very beginning of the telegraph is an effective embodiment of Rogers’ first stage of Innovation-Decision Process: Knowledge, which “Commences when an individual (or other decision making units)is exposed to an innovation’s existence and gains an understanding of how it functions.”
The telegraph companies’ growing enthusiasm for automatic telegraphy brought improvement in their products, from the invention of the duplex, Edison’s quadruplex, until “harmonic” telegraph on which Alexander Graham Bell was working. It is from here, Bell made an Epoch-making discovery: a way to transmit sound-including the human voice-along a wire from one place to another. Just as Rogers states,“A need is a state of dissatisfaction or frustration that occurs when an individual’s desires outweigh the individual’s actualities.” Finally, the new invention of telephone was born, which means a disaster to telegraph in the following decades.
Initially, the telephone was seen merely as a “speaking telegraph”-an improvement of an existing technology, rather than something altogether different.
The appearance of the telephone didn’t attract much attention, however, it is this so called “Improvements in Telegraphy” eventually led to the demise of Telegraphy and replace its market. As disruptive innovation is always not easy for people to perceive, there was nobody pay attention to it.This “unimportant by-product” finally opens another door to innovative communication world.
Standage has strong evidence to justify and conclude, there are many similarities between telegraph network and the Internet, from technical underpinnings to social impact, anyhow, the most fundamental is, they all allow people to communicate across great distances using interconnected networks. Nonetheless, this similarity lies more in humanity itself, rather than the fact of technical replacement.
Despite this ever changing world, ever changing technology, there is only one thing that won’t change, it is human nature. “Given a new invention, there will always be some people who see only its potential to do good, while others see new opportunities to commit crime or make money.” Technology, whatever it is, is only a tool that is utilized to meet human’s desire. On this account, there seemingly to be so many coincidences between telegraph network and Internet: Romance, crimes, business practices, doubts, worries, critique and so on. At first glance, the coincidence seems really incredible; whereas there is one principle reason that behind this phenomenon. It is not history repeats itself but human nature that constantly repeats itself. What had happened before are still happening today and will definitely recur tomorrow. As the verse goes, there is no new thing under the sun.
Albeit it seems present Internet is just a reproduce of “Victorian Internet”, fortunately, there was a transformation on our attitudes toward new technologies, and just as the author himself puts,“We are still living in the new world the telegraphy inaugurated.” When human hope that technology can solve all the problems of mankind as a panacea, at least, they can now learn a lesson from telegraph, aware of that subjective assumption is only a wishfully utopian fantasy. When asked whether the leap on the communication means which eliminate the borders of hundreds of nations represent better understanding among countries and races, and therefore reduce misunderstanding and enhance the world peace, I am more willing to admit the advancement of technology only presents its own progress and the problems faced by mankind can be only solved through their soul. Even today the wheels of history are still rolling on; the new means of communication take up the positions of the fallen and rise to fight one after another. From “twitter” to “smart phone”, they do forward the connection among crowd and make it possible to timely acquire first-hand information, and what else? There is no doubt that we are busier and busier and can’t help to run for catching up the pace of all ever changing novelties.
References:
Bower, J. L., & Christensen, C. M. (1995). Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave. HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW. 73 (1), 43.
Rogers, Everett M., (1995) Diffusion of Innovation, Fourth Edition, The Free Press, New York.
Standage, T. (1998). The Victorian internet. New York, NY: Berkley Books.
Yun, please see Paulo and Michael’s book reviews for how to reference the book title and author at the beginning of your book review. Your explanation of the sequence of events in the book is sometimes hard to discern. Your audience needs a summary of the book to be able to follow yournthoughts. However, your analysis of the book’s subject using Roger’s theories and your weaving of telecommun-ications theory with the story of the telegraph was well done. I liked your personal tone at the beginning and how evocative the book was for you.