How Our Electronic World Came to Be

 Since soon after the creation of electricity, the way humans interact with each other has never been the same. With the introduction of the telegraph and other similar technologies based off of the idea communication with those who aren't directly in your presence there has been a shift in the way that people communicate with those around them. In Nancy Baym's book Personal Connections in the Digital Age the following seven key concepts of “interactivity, temporal structure, storage, replicability, reach, and mobility” (7) are outlined in hopes of making the understanding of the electronic world we live in a little more easily understood. A few of these concepts, primarily storage, replicability, and reach are what make the basis for the technologies we love and use today and they have done so for each integration of the technologies we use starting with the telegraph.

The telegraph was the first way for people to be "electronically present" instead of having to actually be physically present in a place. Described in the documentary How the Victorians Wired the World by Russell Barnes it's easily seen that with the introduction of this new technology a person's reach grows exponentially. Language, love, and what is considered personal all changes with the advent of these new technologies in ways that before were not even thought of. One example of love changing so drastically was that since there was now a possibility of connecting with people far away people that otherwise would have no change of meeting were able to connect and exchange conversation without ever having physically meant the person with whom they were talking. In the documentary this exact scenario was described when they talked about how a couple meet, fell in love, and got married all over the telegraph. This situation was completely new when the telegraph was first invented but has since grown at an exponential rate -- this is evidenced in websites like eHarmony and Tinder. These new sights are different and more advanced but the concept remains the same, matching people with others that they otherwise would almost certainly not meet in the "real world".

Another argument for the historical context of the new world's "electronic presence" is seen in Volti's reading Societies and Technological Change about giving people in far away places axes that previously had symbolized power and presence in their societies (25). In these Australian tribes stone axes had symbolized power and authority between men and the trading of these axes was an act that previously had been reserved for those men with power and wealth. This was until a group of missionaries came into the tribe's society and started giving away steel axes to people in the society that had previously not had access to them. This caused a dissection of the tribe's hierarchy because now something that had previously been an important part for understanding who did what in the tribe was broken up. This is not unlike in today's world where often times people attempt to change things for the better not knowing the social context of a society or the group of people they are affecting and instead end up causing change for the worse. This oftentimes stems from people's thought about a primitive society being worse then their society and wanting to help change that society so it fits what they think of as "acceptable" and often times this attempting to change simply brings about hurt instead of help. People want others to fit into what they believe is the "best version of society" so they go about causing change in places where it was often not asked for.