Guest Lecture: How Communication has evolved!!

Back in the days, when people wanted to pass information from to another, they used to write it down on a tiny piece of paper and tied it to Pigeon’s legs, which actually acted as a carrier between the sender and the receiver. After the invention of telephone systems, the process of communication got simpler. It got even more simple and easier when the ‘web’ evolved. People could transmit information in the form of emails. This was believed to be the most efficient and the most simple way to communicate until now.

But, with the advent of Social Media, the process of communication has become much more interesting than ever before. It is amazing in a way, that web services like Facebook and Twitter which were actually developed with entertainment as their primary focus has now become a tool of communication. Studies have shown that people spend more time on these social networking sites than actually browsing when they are online.

Even in our last lecture, Gilad Lotan showed us a few significant examples of how twitter is being used to pass on information. From those examples that he showed us, the most significant facts that I inferred are:

v  The rate at which information gets transmitted (on twitter) is unimaginable. One of the stand-out examples was that map of information flow he showed, which happened when the East coast faced an earthquake. Someone in Columbia posted a tweet about the quake and the information got transmitted virally and people in New York got to know about the quake even before it actually hit the city.

v  The scale of communication on a platform like twitter is HUGE! It not only reaches the intended recipient, but it also informs all the other passersby! This is Information Broadcast on a level that can’t be compared to anything!

These facts are not just raw, they are real! In fact, I have done a similar thing two years ago. One night, when I was alone at home, I was watching TV and I was happily enjoying a song when I suddenly saw a glass of water on the table shake a little. I was not sure if the glass actually moved / vibrated. I wasn’t sure if it was a quake and it was half past midnight and so I did not want to call or text anyone and ask them if there was a quake. I checked out a few local news channels but nothing had any info about the quake. I was also online at that time on Facebook and so I updated my status, “Did I feel a mild tremor or is it just a wild imagination”! Within seconds, I got five replies asking me to run outta the house.

 Little did I know before, Facebook could be so useful!