The digital world is often presented as something entirely new, an abrupt departure from the previous course of human history. That its challenges are novel, its obstacles unheard of, its impact unforeseen. Silicon Valley teaches us that we have entered uncharted waters, that the confluence of technologies that are both unifying and ripping apart society is something we have never before confronted and therefore that history has little to each us about the best path forward. In reality, all of the challenges of the digital world are merely those we have always faced.
FCC Chairman Newton Minow’s “vast wasteland” speech 58 years ago offers a sobering reminder that the myriad challenges we see today as unique to the dawn of the social media era are in fact the very same issues society faced at the dawn of the television era.
As the railroad image at the top of this article reminds us, societies have long pursued communicative speed. Mail by rail meant a letter could be written and delivered the following morning. Even as we lament today’s preoccupation with real-time information, the advances of past centuries represented similarly momentous upheavals in both the speed of information and the societal expectations to react to that information.
The telegraph connected the nation in a way that could only be dreamed about by previous generations. Yet this enormous speed came with tremendous costs in terms of the societal impacts of having to react to information as it happened, rather than having the luxury of time to contemplate and consider it.
Radio was enormously disruptive in its debut, posing unique challenges as the masses could now receive information in real-time. Forgotten today were the “fake news” concerns of a century ago in which leaders feared that the ability to broadcast breaking information could lead to disruptive falsehoods being spread in contrast to the daily publication cycle of newspapers which provided time to research and verify information before publication.
Indeed, countless radio, film and eventually television episodes dealt with the perils of unverified breaking information. A central premise of the November 12, 1956 I Love Lucy show revolved around characters each believing the other is an escaped murderer based on a steady stream of incomplete breaking information heard over the radio.
In an era marked by a deluge of digital falsehoods and foreign influence, it can be easy to forget that our peers three quarters of a century ago were combating the same evils. Just as fact checkers today scour social media and write rebuttals, so too did programs like “Our Secret Weapon” do the same 77 years ago.
Entertainment shows have long been recognized as a window onto the societal issues at the forefront of each generation and culture. A new law might expand voting rights or permit private property ownership, but until those topics appear in entertainment programming, they are not yet part of the societal discourse. From soap operas to sitcoms, entertainment is a window into the global societal zeitgeist.
The Web is often portrayed as the first time the average American could access information from the other side of the world. In reality, a century ago Americans were eager to hear from throughout the world, with even comedy films like Laurel and Hardy’s 1930 “Hog Wild” building off this interest in the international world.
Our impatience and demand for real-time information is often described as a damaging byproduct of the digital era. Yet nearly 70 years ago, the March 21, 1953 episode of the Honeymooners featured the main characters trying to recall the name of an actress from a movie they had just seen, frantically exploring every available informational avenue, not content to wait even a few hours until morning.
A December 29, 1965 episode of the Dick Van Dyke show features the titular character walking into an unemployment office in which hangs a sign prominently warning “You won’t get tomorrow’s job with yesterday’s skills” reminding us that half a century ago we were wrestling with the very same fears about the rise of automation displacing jobs.
As we lament the impersonality of text messages, emails and social media, it is worth remembering that these concerns have been with us since the dawn of the personal computing revolution. For Better or For Worse touched on this in a January 5, 1989 cartoon featuring school-aged Michael telling his mother that “everything is done on computer now. half of my school programs are on computer… nobody actually writes anymore.” As parents today wrestle with a generation raised entirely on digital mediums and where cursive handwriting is being phased out of many schools, it is comforting to realize that we have been fighting this battle for more than thirty years.
Putting this all together, it seems the challenges we see today as uniquely digital are in fact merely reincarnations of the challenges societies have long faced through the years. In the end, we are reminded that to understand our future it is frequently instructive to look to our past.
