I was especially interested in one particular concept raised by Dr Plaut: “communication as infrastructure” and how he drew parallels between his selected great work and his own research. He discussed how technologies become so rapidly embedded that we no longer notice them – when was the last time you actually thought about the internet cables running underneath the ocean?
This idea is strongly linked with ideas raised in Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph by James W. Carey, one of the great works in Communications Studies. It explores the impact of the invention of the telegraph on communication infrastructure. Previously, communication could not be separated from physical movement, such as sending a letter. The telegraph revolutionised communication in that it rendered geographical distance irrelevant. This led to the belief that non-physical communication could overcome obstacles and bring information to everyone.
With this in mind, we can look at the development of the Internet as a parallel to the invention of electricity; and the telegraph as parallel to social media. The emergence of the Internet (particularly Web 2.0) represented the opportunity for people to do anything. Democracy supposedly became more accessible. You can even obtain a university degree online. Changes in communication infrastructure reorients how we access opportunity, yet we don’t even think about this most of the time. Dr Plaut drew attention to how easily we forget about these technologies because they have become so embedded in our lives.
