How has communication changed over 20 years?
The way in which people communicate with one another today looks different than it did at the start of the 21st century. The past two decades saw an advancement of technology, shaping new communication channels and language usage.
Landlines were still popular
At the turn of the millennium, more than 90% of the population had a landline connected to their home. While cell-phones were common place, with 62% of the population owning one, unlimited calling and text messages were not.
Today less than 60% of the population still have a connected landline phone, while 96% of people own a cellphone of some kind.
Cellphones worked differently
20 years ago cell phones used an analog signal, rather than digital signal. Analog signals work by capturing audio input and converting it into electronic pulses, then sending those pulses via radio wave to the receiver. Multiple phones could share the same frequency channel at one time, trading off for fractions of a second, meaning that sometimes people would hear fragments of someone else’s conversation.
Digital phones take the audio input and convert it into a binary code before sending. The receiver must then reassemble the binary into the original signal. Due to the way they are transmitted and encrypted, digital signals are far more secure, making it nearly impossible to accidentally intercept someone else’s call.
The age of smartphones
In 2000 the first smartphone was connected to the 3G digital network, marking the beginning of mobile wireless access as it is known today. Connecting the smartphone to broadband internet was the first step in phones being able to do things like stream video or share non-text files.
Today, 81% percent of Americans have a smartphone, and those smartphones have almost 3x the processing power as a top-of-the-line personal computer did 20 years ago.
Dial-up internet
Initially wireless internet was accessed through a landline. The computer would connect to a modem which would use the phone line to call the service provider to establish a connection. This modem would take digital information and translate it into an analog signal so that it could travel over a telephone line. Phone calls could not be made at the same time the computer was online and incoming calls could sometimes bump the computer off the line. Because of the rate data was transmitted, streaming audio or video files was not possible through dial-up internet and loading large data files could take hours or even days.
By 2007 nearly half of the households in the US had switched from dial up to broadband internet access. There are four different types of broadband internet connection, and each of them work differently; DSL, cable, fiber-optic, and satellite. Unlike dial-up, broadband internet does not need a phone line and runs continuously, even when it is not connected to a computer. It can also load data over 1000x faster.
Working collaboratively from across the globe
Cloud based applications like GoogleDrive and SharePoint allow individual contributors to work on the same document at the same time form anywhere with internet access. The use of cloud based services requires both high computer processing power and the ability to continuously stream and load large data files. This type of technology would have been impossible 20 years ago.
News travels faster
In 2000, printed newspapers were still considered one of the primary ways people received the news. 20 years later news is shared constantly and in real time.
Over 50% of people today consider social media outlets a regular source of news, with sites like Twitter, and Facebook being some of the lead contributors. All major news organizations have a social media presence and use that presence to share and promote their stories.
Because social media is one of the lead news sources, information is far more collaborative than it once was. News is created via real-time input from multiple first and second hand sources, leading to a significantly more diverse point of view than would have been possible at the start of the millennium.
Keep it short
In the early 21st century text messages were limited to 160 characters or less, meaning that instant communication needed to be short and to the point. When Twitter debuted in 2006 it followed the same model of brevity, limiting the number of characters individuals could use.
This habit of short blocks of text became the industry standard for conveying information, since shorter blocks of text could be consumed quickly and shared easily.
Visuals speak volumes
Visual representations are more engaging and are typically able to be understood by a larger audience.
Companies like IKEA have gone away with using words in their instruction manual all together, opting for entirely visual instructions that are more clear than written descriptions and can be understood regardless of what language their client speaks.
In 2015 Oxford Dictionary named “😂” its word of the year. Marking an official recognition of Emoji as a distinct part of language. Emojis are pictorial representations of thoughts, objects, and actions and can be widely understood across other language barriers.
Ultimately communication has become more collaborative and more visualization focused thanks to technology becoming faster and more powerful.
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