Intercommunication

“ That these messengers should have been strictly forbidden to convey letters for private persons, or that no provision was subsequently made for that purpose, is the more wonderful, when we consider the high character of the nations themselves, and the fact, often pointed out, that the progress of civilization has always been intimately and essentially connected with, and dependent upon, facilities for intercommunication—keeping pace, in fact, with the means which nations possessed for the interchange of person and property, and with them of thought and knowledge. ”

“ We all realize what a progress it would mean if all conventions, societies, publications of world-wide scope, would adopt one world-wide language; if not diplomatists, scientists and scholars alone, but the business man, the social worker, the missionary, even the common laborer, had a simple, universal means of intercommunication. ”

“ We believe that the extraordinary advances in the means of intercommunication between peoples over the past generation offer a practical method of advancing the mutual understanding upon which peace and the institutions of peace must rest, and it is our policy and purpose to use these great technological achievements for the common advantage of the world. ”

“ And now from the sixteenth century onward, as an inevitable by-product of systematic thought, appeared a steadily increasing series of inventions and devices affecting the intercommunication and interaction of men with one another. ”

“ At present the capacity for individual reactions to the same stimulus has far outstripped the capacity for intercommunication. Intercommunication in the biological sense has been allowed to run at haphazard. When once a great gregarious unit of this type shall have been thoroughly organized, and be subject to conscious direction as a whole, there will appear in the world a new kind of social mechanism and a new biological form. The interest in war will give way to a larger and more dramatic [60] field of interest and of conquest than the mere taking and re-taking of land. ”

“ But as intercommunication widens, a sense of attachment to and solidarity with a larger group begins to make itself felt. That intercommunication is largely important in extending the group in response to which the herd instinct may be aroused, is well illustrated by the utter lack of national group feeling Page 85 exhibited during the Great War by recruits drafted from the backwoods districts where they had been tied by no railroads or newspapers to the national civilization of which they were a part. ”

“ It will be more difficult for sovereigns and governments to bring about wars between neighboring nations now, than it was before the existence of that intercommunication which in our day has been created by the press, the railway, and the electric telegraph. ”

“ The fact is that, the intercommunication of nations gives advantages which isolation could not afford, and if such advantages include the spread of knowledge among the people, obtained either in the way I have here described, or by the cheap reprint of a foreign book, it would be difficult to show anything criminal in thus acquiring it. ”

“ All those studies that interest men in different nations would lead to intercommunication in the common tongue. Many books would be written in it, to be circulated everywhere, without being enfeebled and falsified by translation. ”

“ The special form in which they will embody their intentions must, of course, depend to a great degree on the political forms under which they have passed their lives, modified by that approach to homogeneousness which arises from increased intercommunication. ”

“ In the past hundred years, the world has made miraculously rapid strides materially, but moral development has not kept abreast. Conception of the responsibilities of humanity remains virtually in a position of a hundred years ago; given a higher conception of life and its responsibilities, the aeroplane becomes the crowning achievement of that long series which James Watt inaugurated, the last step in intercommunication, the chain with which all nations are bound in a growing prosperity, surely based on moral wellbeing. ”

“ A mechanism of world inter-communication will be devised, embracing the whole planet, freed from national hinderances and restrictions, and functioning with marvellous swiftness and perfect regularity. ”

“ Hence, again, it appears that in all communication between one being and another, there must necessarily interpose a medium, which must be continuous from the communicator to the one receiving the communication. ”

“ In the earlier periods of society, communication between the parts of a country was a rare and difficult undertaking. Individuals at a distance, having little inclination and less opportunity for such intercourse, were naturally satisfied with their limited means of communicating one with another. ”

“ The communication of letters by persons living at a distance is the same as a communication by word of mouth between persons living in the same town. You might as well tax words spoken upon the Royal Exchange, as the communications of various persons living in Manchester, Liverpool, and London. ”

“ For railroads, steamships, aeroplanes, telegraphs, telephones, and wireless telegraphy, as never before, have made communication between nations so easy, quick, and direct that distance is almost eliminated, enabling the whole world to think, reason, and act at the same time, and to be influenced as one human solidarity. ”

“ To make effective use of the modern system of communication in any way or all of its ramifications (streets, railways, steamship lines, telephone, telegraph, postal service, etc.) , men are required to adapt their needs and their motions to the exigencies of the process whereby this civilized method of intercourse is carried into effect. ”

“ So it’s particularly true, because 20th century technology offered us ubiquitous point‐to‐point wire line interpersonal communication called “the telephone”, and there was a very long period—three generations plus—in which the profits of treating that as a commodity for sale accrued to a few favored players who became enormously powerful. ”

“ Next to social communications by means of visits and conversation, are communications by means of letters and billets. It is not only absence, but a multiplicity of business, and a great number of relations which give a very great extension to this part of our social interests. ”

“ Communication will become closer and more general. Already the earth is a network of lines and cables, linking continent to continent. Soon a speaker will have the earth for his sounding board and his hall of audience, and the privilege of addressing the human race will be prized above a coronation. ”

“ We have established in every large region of population a system of voice-nerves that puts every man at every other man's ear, and which so magically eliminates the factor of distance that the United States becomes three thousand miles of neighbors, side by side. ”

“ Even with an intercommunicating telephone system, with which every large office and plant should be equipped, many of these requests are of a nature that, to guard against misunderstandings, demand written communications. ”

“ The organisation of research and the system of inter-communication are so arranged that the tasks beyond the strength and the problems beyond the power of the ordinary members of the community are continually being collected and automatically delivered at the workshop of this or that high priest. ”

“ We have further to consider the increased speed of communication. Distance no longer exists for the telegraph; “the entire civilised world has become a large room in which we can all talk with one another.” ”

“ Twenty-three years ago the first telephone exchange in the world was established in the United States, and from that beginning has been built up the great system of exchanges, and the network of connecting lines over which conversation can be held between points over a thousand miles apart. ”

“ Interoperable communications.—The term ``interoperable communications'' means the ability of emergency response providers and relevant Federal, State, and local government agencies to communicate with each other as necessary, through a dedicated public safety network utilizing information technology systems and radio communications systems, and to exchange voice, data, or video with one another on demand, in real time, as necessary. ”

“ Besides the marvelous cheapening of transportation, other new means of communication have resulted from modern inventions. The telegraph, the submarine cable, and the telephone, all have served to render communication prompt and certain. ”

“ But it's also an extremely -- I think from our perspective, we have been an active administration and I think the ability to communicate relatively instantly with a wide variety of people to be able to kind of network, to be able to use electronic mail and electronic conferencing technology, to be able to share information has been critical to our ability to stay on top -- like I think any modern organization -- to stay on top of what's going on, and to be able to have a dialogue. ”

“ Our commercial code of signals is so invented and arranged that no matter what tongues may meet, perhaps those utterly incomprehensible by word of mouth, yet by these signs communications may be carried on with great facility. The whole system is so beautifully simple that a child of ordinary intelligence can understand it. ”

“ Laying open such a communication would do more to people, to cultivate, and to civilize the world, than any other effort—than all other efforts made by the world at large, when combined and brought together. ”

“ Through the instrumentality of a closer and quicker communication, we have become better acquainted, our mutual wants and necessities are better understood, the relations of each nation to the other are more clearly defined, and out of all these conditions we can plainly foresee that we have a common purpose and destiny to fulfil—which can only be {96} accomplished by a genuine fusion of the whole people. ”

“ Being sated with the ordinary common-place things of every-day life, and having heard a great deal about the mysterious communications telegraphed to this, our ignorant sphere, by wise and benignant spirits of bliss, through the dignified medium of old chairs, wash-stands and card-tables, we three (who had met again) determined to put ourselves in communication with the next world, to find out, if possible, our chances of a favorable reception when business or pleasure calls us in that direction. ”

“ For, to take the analogy of wireless telegraphy, we are all of us probably ‘receivers’ to some extent, and catch now and then a message or part of a message that the eternal waves of emotion are ceaselessly shouting aloud to those who have ears to hear, and materializing themselves for those who have eyes to see. Not being, as a rule, perfectly tuned, we grasp but pieces and fragments of such messages, a few coherent words it may be, or a few words which seem to have no sense. ”

“ Easy and rapid movement, and almost instantaneous communication brought people together in towns and cities, built up trade in goods and services, increased speed of communications and enabled people living at a distance from one another to keep in close touch, bringing human enterprises and human beings into continuing contact. ”

“ In order to reduce the possibility of confidential communications falling into the hands of persons other than those for whom they are intended, the sender will enclose them in an inner and outer cover ”

“ Already practical schemes for the establishment of communication by telephone are under advisement, and it may be but a short time before we can converse with friends thousands of miles across the sea. ”

“ Some point of contact they must have with the world in which they live, and if their influence is to be based on widespread sympathy, the contact must be in a region where there can be, if not full mutual comprehension, at least a large measure of practical agreement and willing co-operation. ”

“ In America you have inter-state telephone service, you have the constant extension of an elaborate and efficient system, whilst on our side of the water we intelligent Europeans are asking to have the apparatus removed as a hindrance and a failure. ”

“ So it is with everything of vital interest to the general people; rapid and sufficient communication is the only limiting power that controls their diffusion. In proportion as the diffusive means increase, in number and extent, so do the interests of the people become proportionately assimilated and best systems prevail.
A striking exemplification of the benefit that would flow from the adoption of general systems in all things may be drawn from the system of international telegraphing. ”

“ In state legislatures, municipal councils, law courts, religious organizations, theaters, lodges, societies, boards of directors, stockholders' meetings, business discussions, classrooms, dinner parties, social functions, friendly calls—in every human relationship where two people meet there is communication by means of speech. ”

“ The price of the transmission of messages is less in America than in England, especially if we regard the distance of transmission. In America a message is limited to ten words; in England to twenty words ”

“ A sort of moral elevation, the result of their leadership, has come to mark their character. When one is acquainted with the matter in hand, a simple telephone conversation is a model of clear language and logical reasoning. ”

“ You know we Americans do more ‘phoning than any other people on earth, Why, last year, we held fourteen and a half billion conversations, and that is two thirds of the telephone talks of the whole world. ”

“ In this whole he lives as in an element, drawing from it the materials of his growth and adding to it whatever constructive thought he may express.
Thus the system of communication is a tool, a progressive invention, whose improvements react upon mankind and alter the life of every individual and institution. ”