Abstract
Beginnings of telecommunication relate to coding and telegraphy; the latter is becoming obsolete today, replaced by email. Codes, on the other hand, retain their fundamental importance because of the security demands related to network communication (see e.g. Lubacz 2001). Codes were of course used even in ancient times, but as the first practical code of the epoch of industrial civilization we can count the code of Luis Braille replacing print for blind persons. This code is not digital, but analog-digital: with the sense of touch, a blind person perceives the relative positions (analog information) of embossed points (digital information) on a page. In this sense, this code is closer to actual functioning of human brains than the cognitivist models of brain as a giant digital computer.
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Notes
- 1.
In Poland, we also use the old name “łączność” that was used for the first time around 1918 in Polish army to describe military telecommunication. The National Institute of Telecommunication in Poland still uses its old name “Instytut Łączności”.
- 2.
Therefore, the word “cell” used sometimes in popular language to describe a mobile telephone device meant (and also means today) something quite different in technical language: it is an area of terrain served by an antenna of mobile telephony.
- 3.
I use the concept of mathematical modelling not in the narrow sense of abstract logics, but in the broader sense used in systems engineering: mathematical modelling is the creation and utilization of mathematical models of diverse phenomena, in particular technical phenomena, for their computerized analysis by simulation, optimization, etc., in general, for virtual laboratories.
- 4.
If we look on the Internet for the keywords “teoria sieci” (network theory in Polish), we will get pages where it is used either in technical or mathematical sense, but the keywords “network theory” result in answers providing mostly the sociological meaning.
- 5.
The patent of Zuse from the year 1936 describing the first digital computer is based on elements of automatic telephone exchanges.
- 6.
More precisely, the medium is the massage, not the medium is the message; McLuhan used the metaphorical play of words in order to stress the direct influence, and not only verbal, but rather a preverbal content, of a medium on the recipient.
- 7.
The main advantage of frequency modulation is its noise tolerance, resilience with respect to perturbations of the amplitude of the carrier frequency.
- 8.
For the transmission of voice in telephony even today we apply less stringent requirements, using operating bandwidth of only 7 kHz or even 3.4 kHz.
- 9.
Today, Douglas Englebart is more commonly known as the inventor of computer mouse; but actually he also started work on virtual reality.
- 10.
I am aware of the critique of the concept of progress in contemporary sociology and philosophy of technology, but I reject this critique outright, asking its proponents a simple question: If your critique is substantiated, then perhaps you would like to live, say, 200 years earlier, when the expected life time was two times shorter than today, because of, among other things, more primitive medical technology?
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Wierzbicki, A.P. (2015). Telecommunication, Radio Broadcasting, Television. In: Technen: Elements of Recent History of Information Technologies with Epistemological Conclusions. Intelligent Systems Reference Library, vol 71. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09033-7_7
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