Book Review: The final parallel not mentioned in Tom Standage's The Victorian Internet - The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers

3-6-99 (ruel) -- In looking at the developing history of interactive TV and trying to predict whether this new media will succeed, one can look to the past for similar successions of technology. The Victorian Internet, which really does not discuss interactive TV, is written by Tom Standage who is a science writer for The Economist in London. Standage wrote this excellent narrative on the early history of the telegraph with the theme that there are parallels between the telegraph (the "highway of thought") and the internet (the "information super highway"). Standage provides the following parallel description of the telegraph and the internet:

[A] new communications technology was developed that allowed people to communicate almost instantly across great distances, in effect shrinking the world faster and further than ever before. A worldwide communications network whose cables spanned continents and oceans, it revolutionized business practice, gave rise to new forms of crime, and inundated its users with a deluge of information. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates and dismissed by the skeptics. Governments and regulators tried and failed to control the new medium. Attitudes toward everything from news gathering to diplomacy had to be completely rethought. Meanwhile, out on the wires, a technological subculture with its own customs and vocabulary was establishing itself.

This 227-page book with index is a page-turning read with very informative personal stories of global communications in the early days of the telegraph. The dot-and-dash world of the early telegraph is like a mirror image of the bit-and-byte world of the current-day internet. For instance, the invention of duplex and then quadruplex simultaneous transmissions of multiple telegraph messages in both directions and the further squeezing of telegraph messeges for transmission on a single wire bring to mind the modern-day efforts to send more and more information through high-speed and broadband internet transmissions. Like email messages that may have to bounce through various email paths, telegraph messages may have to pass through several sorting stations. Just as email users may add unique signatures to their email messages, telegraph operators added two-letter signatures, which were called "sigs," to telegraph messages to identify themselves. Like internet users who swap jokes, stories, and gossip via email, telegraph operators swapped jokes, stories, and gossip via the telegraph wires. And like internet users congregating in chat rooms, hundreds of telegraph operators held after-hours meetings via telegraph. With regard to business, Western Union president William Orton stated in 1870, "The fact is, the telegraph lives upon commerce. It is the nervous system of the commercial system." Today, you have companies of all sorts positioning themselves in and profiting from the marketplace of the internet.

Although the book discusses the parallels of the nineteenth-century telegraph with the modern-day internet, the book does not discuss the final parallel: if the telephone replaced the telegraph, then what replaces the current-day internet as dominated by PCs? It would not be too much of stretch to predict a parallel development where the PC-centric internet we have today could be replaced by an interactive media dominated by the television.

In writing about the telephone, Standage writes, "Initially, the telephone was seen merely as a 'speaking telegraph' -- an improvement of [the then] existing technology [of the telegraph], rather than something altogether different. Even Bell, whose 1876 patent was entitled 'Improvements in Telegraphy,' referred to his invention as a form of telegraph...." In the early days of the telephone, people invoked the familar telegraph to describe the then new telephone. Today, interactive television is interchangeably referred as "internet TV," "internet for TV," "WebTV," and similar terms that invoke the familar internet and the web.

In the early days of the telephone, everyday people were told that the telephone was better than the telegraph because the telephone could be used by anyone and did not require a technician such as a telegraph operator skilled in morse code. Similarly, everyday non-computer literate people are now told that WebTV, interactive TV, or internet TV is better than using the internet on a computer because you did not have to be a computer whiz who knew how use a complicated PC. You just watch the TV and surf the net like you would surf TV channels. The television is an easy-to-use device that anyone can watch and use with an easy-to-use remote control. Interactive TV is expected to be implemented across the board so that anyone can use an interactive boob tube without having to be a computer technician. Interactive TV could very well replace the current PC-centric internet.

Standage quotes a Chambers Journal commentary in 1885 as stating, "[T]he electric telegraph itself is threatened in its turn with serious rivalry at the hands of a youthful and vigourous competitor. A great future is doubtless in store for the telephone." Standage further writes, "Undermined by the relentless advance of technology, the telegraphic community, along with its customs and subculture, began to wither and decline." Similarly, the PC, which is currently used to access the internet, is threatened by the serious rivalry of the upstart interactive TV. Computer manufacturers and software companies have been acknowledging that there is a threat from the shift of interactivity from the PC to the TV. Companies, like the Microsoft computer software company which bought WebTV, may see that there is a possible great future for interactive TV where the PC may lose its dominance in the consumer marketplace.

Based on the parallels in Standage's book, one can see that just as the telegraph was replaced by the telephone, that the internet as dominated by the PC may eventually be replaced by an interactive media dominated by the television.

Also check out Ruel's overview timeline for Interactive TV

 
Author Tom Standage "Future-Proofed" his Book

(03-24-99) - Author Tom Standage writes in:

I just came across your comments on my book, and I wanted to explain why I didn't mention this parallel. While publicising the book in media interviews, I have made this point repeatedly: that the Internet is currently in its "telegraph phase" and with any luck will be replaced by something as easy to use as the telephone.

As to what this technology might be, I have no idea. I for one am sceptical about the idea that it will be interactive TV. I am more inclined to go with the idea of embedded devices and ubiquitous computing. But by mentioning any of these possibilities in the book, I would immediately mark it as the product of its time; part of the text would be out of date within a few months. By not mentioning it, I hope to have future-proofed the book more effectively.

Tom Standage
Science Correspondent
The Economist
London

Amazon has the book: The Victorian Internet - The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers

You may also want to check out another book: The Great Car Craze - How Southern California Collided with the Automobile in the 1920s (also available from Amazon)

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