Digital Communications: From Bell's Wire to Global Networks

The Origins of Digital Communication

Digital communications could be described as having been born from the first electronic transmission of words via a wire, uttered by Alexander Graham Bell. Those words — "Watson, come here. I want to see you" (American Treasures, 2010) — will live on in history as marking a change not only in the manner in which individuals communicate, but in the transformation of an entire world. From that era to today's digital communication accessibility, available almost anywhere on the planet, took nearly 140 years, yet advanced society light years into the future.

The Scale and Reach of Modern Digital Networks

In today's modern communication landscape there are a wide variety of methods for conveying not only the spoken word, but the written word, text, images, pictures, books, and entire libraries of information at the press of a button. There are also a number of digital methods for transmission, including but not limited to TETRA (terrestrial trunked radio), the Internet via wideband and broadband, and a variety of networks used for public and private transmissions. Many of these methods carry more information than Bell likely ever imagined.

One recent article found that "3G cellular networks can usually handle data rates of several megabits per second" (Evans-Pughe, 2011, p. 75) — in other words, more information can now be transmitted in one second than the Library of Congress held in its archives during the Bell era.

Emerging Transmission Technologies

The rate of transmission, and the sheer volume of what is being transmitted, is an astounding display of human creativity. The fact that such creativity is not limited to one nation or region suggests that one day in the near future, every living person on the planet will have access to every other person on the planet. A current report shows that China and India "already boast some 500 million Internet users, and we forecast nearly 700 million more will be added by 2015" (Daga, Manuel, & Narasimhan, 2010, p. 74).

One might ask: what drives the appeal of digital communications? Besides the obvious capability for instant communication with loved ones in remote places, other uses include gaming, streaming video, and entertainment. The Daga et al. study determined that "China's digital usage, which is similar to that of the United States, skews toward instant messaging, social networks, gaming, and streaming video," and that "increasingly, Internet users in China are substituting digital media for traditional ones, with the potential for further cannibalization as digital consumption grows" (p. 17). The same study determined that only seven percent — approximately 81 million people — of India's population at the time had access to digital communications. One can only imagine the future growth of digital communication with a sense of awe.

Conclusion

What the literature seems to portend is that communicating with a cousin in remote Russia from a busy downtown intersection in New York City will likely cost less and be far more accessible in the very near future — and that those communications will not necessarily involve shouting into a telephone handset, but will likely include the ability to see and hear one another as if standing right next to each other.