I was talking to a co-worker, a young computer programmer, who said that he was excited to be working in this field because he hoped to be able to
develop a programme that would help people communicate with each other. If they could just share their stories, he felt sure that people would learn to get along with each other, and we would see a substantial reduction in tensions between people.

Hasn't happened so far.

When the telegraph spread through the developed world in the middle of the
19th century, it was supposed to bring a new era of peace. This was truly
the dawning of the electric age—now, news of distant lands could be
transmitted virtually instantaneously. No longer would we be ignorant of
other people. Scientific American claimed that the telegraph promoted the
"kinship of humanity."

A similar rhetoric developed around the telephone. With that device, you
could phone anybody in the world! (Well, anybody with a similar device.)
Surely, people in distant lands sharing their experiences could not help
but reduce tensions between nations.

Despite the use of the telegraph and the telephone, the world was plunged
into two barbaric international wars that cost tens of millions of people
their lives.

The advent of television marked a return to this utopian rhetoric. Given
the ability to see the way people in distant lands live, it was only to be
expected that great efforts would be expended to decrease human suffering
around the world. In the 1930s, RCA executive David Sarnoff claimed that:
"When television has fulfilled its ultimate destiny, man's sense of
physical limitation will be swept away and his boundaries of sight and
hearing will be at the limits of the earth itself. With this may come a new
horizon, a new philosophy, a new sense of freedom, and greatest of all, a
finer and broader understanding between all the people of the world."

This did not stop Korea or Vietnam from happening. Contrary to popular
belief, television may not have been a significant factor in Vietnam ending
(political advisers had started questioning the wisdom of continuing war
before the coverage got the attention of citizens). Either way, military
leaders have since developed methods of keeping the worst aspects of war
off of people's television screens, so the medium did not stop wars in
Guatemala, El Salvador, Bosnia or the Persian Gulf, to name but a few.

Proponents of computers could point out that it was flaws in the previous
technologies that caused them to leave their utopian promise unfulfilled.
The telephone, for instance, is not distributed widely enough (so that half
of all people living on the African sub-continent have never made a phone
call), leaving some parts of the world woefully underrepresented on the
system. (Since the Internet piggybacks on the phone system, it's hard not
to wonder how it can be seen to be an improvement on this situation.)
I would suggest a different interpretation: improved communications
technology will never bring peace on earth because the fundamental problem—the dark aspect of human nature—is not amenable to technological solutions.

The utopian promise rests on the idea that hatred is bred of ignorance.
It's easy to hate blacks or Jews or [insert minority group here] if you
have little contact with them. Conversely, if you get to know others, you
see that, superficial differences aside, they are human just like you, with
similar needs and desires and, therefore, deserve your compassion and
respect, if not love.

This is undoubtedly partially true, but it does not tell the whole story.
For hatred is also bred of an exaggerated sense of difference. Everybody
wants to belong to a special group. Belittling those outside our group
reinforces our special membership. This need for differences asserts itself
most forcefully in times of crisis (economic downturn or social change),
when scapegoats for group problems must be found.

Thus, many people consciously choose not to associate with anybody who is
not like them, even when the opportunity exists. Why didn't the telephone
bring people together more? One reason is that we tend only to phone people we already know. How are we going to get to know members of other groups that way? (Some research is beginning to emerge which suggests that people use the Internet in a similar way—to communicate with others who basically share the opinions we already hold.)

Even when we can clearly see the suffering of others, it doesn't mean we
will act to stop it. Why didn't television bring people together more?
Because we can too easily turn our attention away from what we don't want
to see. After the first wave of African famine relief, starving children
with bloated bellies became a staple of late night TV. Yet, despite
increasing death tolls, individual aid decreased. To be sure, personal
donations were never a proper substitute for political action to deal with
grotesque trade imbalances. For our purposes, however, it is worth noting
that images of starvation soon stopped being a spur for people to act in
humane ways.

Technology will not solve the problem of the darkness in the heart of the
human soul. For that, perhaps we need fewer computer programmers and
communications scholars and more poets.

SOURCE: David E. Nye. "Shaping Communications Networks: Telegraph,
Telephone, Computer." Social Research (V64 N3, Fall 1997).

Copyright © 2001 Ira Nayman. All Rights Reserved.

Ira Nayman has a PhD in Communications from McGill University.