Title: The Victorian Internet
Standage, T. (1998). The Victorian Internet the remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century
The book describes the process of inventing the telegraph and its notable impact in the nineteenth century. The emergence of the telegraph shortened the long distance and made people communicate with each other faster than other ways like horse or ship. Moreover, we can regard the telegraph as the first “Internet” because it has many fantastic similarities with the Internet. Indeed, the telegraph in the Victorian period has been taken as the prototype of the Internet in the twentieth century. The author of this book said that the telegraph revolutionized the nineteenth century even more than the Internet in the twentieth century.
After reading this famous book, I really admire many of the people in this book who had a lot of passion to keep researching the telegraph and promoting the device, even though they had to bear frustration in the beginning. It reminds me of a traditional Chinese story： The jade. The story described a craftsman who found a jade one day and believed it was the best jade in the world. Therefore, he recommended it to the Emperor, but the Emperor thought it was a fake and cut the craftsman’s left leg with anger. However, the craftsman never gave up and still insisted to keep recommending the jade to every Emperor. Unfortunately, he lost his two hands and legs because every Emperor thought he lied to him. At the end, the jade was verified as the best jade in the world and he got the respect he desired for his entire life. Moreover, his contribution is that people can enjoy the sight of the most beautiful jade in the world. In conclusion, the craftsman’s passion is similar to the passion of the inventors of the telegraph. Back to the book, we have to thank many scientists’ insistence and contribution, like Morse. The invention of the telegraph, the first “Internet” prototype, changed our inconvenient lives into a convenient telecommunication society. It shows that enthusiasm had the power to displace skepticism.
Secondly, I agree with some points of the author. For example, many Victorians thought the telegraph would reduce misunderstanding between nations and build a new era of world peace. However, today we can corroborate the theory doesn’t work because there are many wars and disputes in this world, even though we have more advanced technologies to communicate with each other. From the author’s perspective, although the telegraph failed to live up to utopian claims, it still transformed the world and redefined our attitudes to new technologies. As the author said, I appreciate that the telegraph was invented because it started to bring new communicative technologies and let me contact my family conveniently, even though I live in a different country. Many pieces build up world peace so it is impossible to depend on one technology to achieve this goal. However, I believe the telegraph and other new technologies still have a chance to lead the world into utopian because these technologies teach us to think globally and act hyperlocally.
However, I disagree with what the author, Tom Standage, said in the “afterword page” (April 2007). He said that in poor countries mobile phones are more widespread than PCs and emerging markets will be wireless-centric, not PC-centric. I think mobile phones are used only to communicate, but PCs can be used to educate poor people to improve their lives. It will be more helpful to spread PCs devices into poor countries rather than mobile phones and I believe PCs are the mainstream technology of the future. For example, ASUS is the first technology company to sell PCs at low price (less than US 200 dollars) to poor countries like Africa on October, 2007. ASUS called the PCs as “Eee PCs”. The business of Eee PCs is very great and many other companies will sell their own PCs at a low price in succession. Once poor people can afford the price of personal computers, they can use them to refresh themselves and find more opportunities to make their lives better. That is why I believe PCs will be the mainstream device and help people most in the future.
Moreover, there is an interesting phenomenon we can point out from the book and discuss deeply. The editor, James Bennett, who worked in New York Herald newspaper, said that telegraph may not affect the business of magazine, but it will kill the business of newspapers. In fact, we can see the telegraph actually help people collect and deliver information to newspaper faster than before. It improved newspapers. However, every new technology which develops because of the telegraph almost kill the business of newspapers. Why? Is it the destiny for newspaper to be replaced by new technologies like blogs? In my opinion, it is yes. Many new technologies make the whole world so close that we need to know more information faster than before. Especially, I think people in this modern society have knowledge anxiety, so we have to know all the news about the world as faster as possible. Therefore, newspaper can not satisfy us any more. It is destiny of newspapers to be eliminated through competition
