The following is the text of the Fourth Rajapoopathy Anandarajan Memorial Lecture delivered on January 20, 2003, at the Bishop’s College Auditorium :

Professor Murugan Anandarajan, Ph.D.,

Associate Professor of Information Systems, Drexel University, Philadelphia.

Thank you Mr. Murugesu for those kind words of introduction. All the achievements you mentioned are largely due to my beloved mother’s belief in me. When I used to hang out on the road down Ward Place with my friends, she believed in me. When I played the fool (which was most of the time) she still believed in me. When well-meaning people said, "that Rowdy won’t amount to much" her belief in me grew stronger. Her belief propelled me (the Rowdy) into what I am today and what I hope to be in the future.

The invitation to deliver the 4th Rajapoopathy Memorial lecture in honour of my dear mother, by the board of trustees’ means much more to me than all the achievements that Mr. Murugesu talked about. I thank you, for giving me this privilege.

In delivering this lecture, I follow in the giant footsteps of past speakers such as Mr. Murugesu, and the late Dr. Sivasubramaniam. This is indeed a humbling experience.

I would also like to take a moment to thank all of you, our friends, for coming here today. Your presence is very much appreciated.

Today’s topic was one that was close to my mother’s heart. She loved communication technology and we had many lively arguments in the kitchen about technology and its impact on society. She strongly believed that while communication technology improved quality of life, it also had its downside impact on society. I, of course would disagree. Our arguments went on for years until four years ago, when the angels took her away as gently as the flower that she was. Our last discussion, which was about her PDA, was four days before she left us.

The 4th Rajapoopathy memorial lecture is based on some of these themes. It is entitled "Societal Paradox of Communication Technologies: Tokens to the Internet".

Communication Technology and Society

The tide of biological evolution moves slowly, giving advantage to some mutations over a period of centuries. Social evolution however, is altogether another matter. Driven by discovery and invention, it is often rapid and unpredictable.

Some inventions cause little change, while others have significantly impacted our society. Many of these discoveries have become double-edge swords in the hands of mankind. Inventions ranging from gunpowder to nuclear energy have presented society both incredible benefits and previously unimaginable horrors.

Yet, often times, the effects of such inventions on society are not as dramatic as this, but their impact is no less significant. One such category of inventions is that of communication technologies.

History offers strong evidence that communication technology can change society. At times, it is difficult to grasp how such a neutral technology may lead to such change. A quick retrospective look at the last few centuries will reveal that various communication technologies have done just that.

For instance, think of the telephone. This technology changed the way we think about both time and distance.

Most of you phone friends and loved ones all over the world at any time of the day. Fifty years ago this task was not as simple as it is today. One hundred years ago, the telephone was available to very few people. To keep in touch, you probably would have had to wait over three months to receive a letter by surface mail.

While communication technologies can provide benefits, it has its down side as well. Let me give you a hypothetical scenario. If I was to say that from this point forward, random people were going to come into your house; make you stop whatever you were doing; and force you into having conversations with them. How many of you would like that?

That is exactly what the telephone does every single day of our lives through telemarketers.

As we will see, as communication technology matures, and becomes more sophisticated, it can lead to social upheavals, and shifts in economic power.

Communication Technologies of the Past

Whenever the term communication technology is mentioned, many of us think of the technology of today. Some of us may go back several hundred years and think of the printing press. Communication technology however, is much older.

Human communication technologies began with the so-called "Great Leap Forward" which took place some 35,000 years ago. This was an evolutionary point at which physiological changes in man’s vocal tract led to vocalizations and perhaps the first sound.

Identifying the first man-made communication technology maybe an impossible task. However, it’s not impossible to let our imaginations wander.

Almost as soon as our prehistoric ancestors made tools they probably made tools for communication as well. Perhaps, the earliest communication device was a simple bone, with scratches, relating to the number of goats in the herd.

The origin of writing as a communication technology can be traced back to the use of tokens. In the Fertile Crescent of Sumer possibly as early as 8,000 B.C., small clay triangles, spheres, cones, and other tokens were molded to represent sheep, measures of grain, jars of oil, and other goods (See Figure 1).

It is thought such tokens were used by society to keep track of their resources. These tokens appeared around the same period when society changed from being a hunting and gathering society to an agriculture-based one. Tokens were part and parcel of the Neolithic phenomenon i.e., the agricultural revolution."

Around 3,700 B.C. tokens further evolved. Tokens were now placed in ‘bullas’, which were hollow clay balls, for storage and ease of movement. These bullas further evolved over the next few centuries.

People began flattening clay and scratching a representation of the token on it. The earliest known scratching of tokens, are found on Sumerian clay tablets, such as Figure 2, which date back to around 3,300 B.C. (See Figure 2)

Similar forms of writing were developed over the next few centuries. For example, the Egyptian hieroglyphics around 3100 B.C. and the Harappan ideographic script around 2500 B.C. However this communication technology had limited impact on society because of its very limited penetration beyond a small group of professionals. In other words, mediation was required between those who could read and those who could not.

The first alphabetic script, North Semitic, which is illustrated in Figure 3, was developed in Palestine by 1,600 B.C. The Greek alphabet was introduced around 1,100 B.C. Figure 4 provides an example of the early Greek alphabet. As you can see they wrote back and forth. So the letter ‘E’ for instance could have been represented in so many different forms. It is doubtful whether the early Greek alphabet helped in bridging the gap between those who could read and those who could not. (See Figure 3and 4)

Over a period of centuries however, Athens got the upper hand over the other Greek states, and standardized writing from left right. The standardized Greek alphabet, thus, placed a gulf between all alphabetic societies and their precursors. The ease of the alphabet made reading and writing a social goal. It was also an important consideration in the development of political democracy in Greece since the free citizens could read laws and take part in elections and read laws. Another consequence of alphabetic culture is the social stratification in the protoliterate cultures.

The growth of literacy however, was still constrained by the materials used and the methods employed to manufacture the written word. For instance as my father points in his brilliant article ‘History of Spectacles, Contact lens and Optometry’ in the latest issue of the Ophthalmic forum, the "burning glasses" were used to erase letters from tablets. Nevertheless, the alphabet did not fully come into its own until the next major advancement in communication technology. This was Gutenberg’s invention of the movable type printing press in the 15th century.

Printing as an Agent of Change

Printing spread the Italian Renaissance throughout Europe. With cheap printing, came "unauthorized" ideas, including Martin Luther’s. When Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the castle door, the political movement took off quickly. The rapid spread of his theses surprised even Luther, who in a letter to the Pope said

"It is a mystery to me, how my theses spread to so many places. They were meant exclusively for our academic circles here".

You have to remember that before the Reformation, the church controlled an effective monopoly on knowledge and education. Printing changed this. It diffused knowledge as never before, and altered social and intellectual life. Printing hastened the Reformation, and the Reformation spread printing further. Thus, the printing press changed the way in which society collected, transmitted, and preserved information. Forty years after Gutenburg invented his printing press there were presses in 110 cities in six different countries. Fifty years after the press was invented, more than eight million books had been printed almost all of them filled with information that had previously been unavailable to the average person. Mass production of printed material and the dissemination of new ideas, were instrumental in launching a worldwide social phenomenon.

Thus, the printing press could be considered an important agent of social change.

Up to this point, we have looked at the history of communication technology in terms of a variety of media that it was created on. To move the message, one moved the medium. Telegraphy changed this underlying model.

The Advent of Early Telegraphy

Prior to the telegraph, information could be moved only as fast as a horse could gallop. With the advent of harnessable electricity, a major shift occurred in communication technology, and the telegraph became the first wave of a new communications revolution. This leap from the transportation mode to the transmission mode was not without its precursors.

Communication over long distances through visual sighting methods such as smoke signals, talking drums, and structured smoke signals were early ways of sending messages without messengers. The Romans improved visual transmission around 150 A.D. They used a system of towers that were several miles apart. From each tower, torch signals, relaying the letters of the alphabet were transmitted between the towers.

Such methods of visual transmission however, was severely limited. It could signal trouble with an invading enemy, and not much more. And lets not forget ancient airmail transmission systems, when Mark Anthony besieged Brutus in 44 B.C. he communicated with allies through messenger pigeons! Our Roman friends used birds as a transmission device for "shady deals" as well. For instance, some Romans who were fond of chariot racing would catch birds from their nests and take them to the races in Rome. In order to give their friends back home, advance results, these gamblers would paint the birds with the colour of the winning team and release them to fly back to their nest!

It must also be remembered, that message transmission by foot or horse was extremely dangerous. Thus, each community was isolated, and the dialect spoken in one community was all but incomprehensible fifty miles away.

Chaucer makes this point in the Canterbury tales; he describes the plight of a group of 14th century London merchants who are shipwrecked, on the north coast of England. Since the locals couldn’t understand the merchants, they were accused of being foreign spies and thrown into jail!!

So as you can imagine methods of transmission were not very reliable. And the popular method of message transmission was by word of mouth. And much like today, rumour ruled.

In 1791, Claude Chappe, a Frenchman, developed an optical device, which used flags and lanterns to signal over distances (See Figure 5). He named it "the telegraph" from the Greek words "far writer." (See Figure 5)

Napoleon Bonaparte, who came to power in 1799, ordered the building of an extensive network of optical telegraphs. By the 1830s, lines of optical telegraph towers stretched across much of Western Europe.

However there were major limitations with the optical telegraph. First it was expensive to run and second it could not work well in the dark.

Modern Telegraphy

The story of the electromagnetic telegraph begins with the publication by William Gilbert in 1600 of "On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies, and the Great Magnet of the Earth". Faraday’s invention of electrical induction and Morse’s electromagnetic telegraph and signaling code in the early 19th century brought in the era of modern telegraphy. After initial scorn for the technology, the public became fascinated with telegraphy, especially after it played a major role in apprehension of criminals such as Fiddler Dick, who was England’s most notorious pickpocket.

The electric telegraph was described in 1858 as "the preponderance of power to the nations." It binds together by a vital cord all nations. The word information was redefined. Prior to telegraph, information was sought as part of the process of understanding and solving particular problems. Prior to the telegraph, information tended to be of local interest. Telegraphy changed all this, and instigated the second stage of the information revolution. The telegraph removed space as an inevitable constraint on the movement of information.

So with the advent of the electric telegraph, distance was no longer a constraint on the movement of messages. For the first time transportation and communication were disengaged from each other. By 1930, there was a network of over 350,000 miles of telegraph lines in existence. This global network, erased state boundaries, collapsed regions, and wrapped continents into a communication grid.

The telegraph drastically changed economic and social structures. The combined influence of telegraphy and other technological innovations such as the steam engine, led to the industrial revolution.

With the arrival of the industrial revolution, owners of factories and railroads were the new wealthy. The labor population, who were formerly employed in agriculture, was now relocated to the new factory urban centers.

This led to social changes, as women and children were introduced into the workforce. Factory labour, now separated work life from the home life. And the telegraph played a major role in creating a divide between work and family.

Communication Technologies and the Consumer’ based Societies

The Photograph was invented at approximately the same time as the telegraph. Photograph, the term derived from the Greek words light and writing, brought about a new awareness of people, places and things. Projected motion picture became a reality in the 1890’s.

These image technologies changed the way people viewed and related to the world. It led to the creation of consumer-based mass societies.

After the telegraph and the photograph, the next major communication technology was the telephone. Bell demonstrated this new device in Philadelphia in 1876. The telephone had near universal public approval. This was because the telephone had an important advantage over the telegraph.

The telephone allowed users to reach one another directly, with ordinary speech. In other words, unlike the telegraph, the telephone permitted unmediated conversation.

The introduction of the telephone dramatically affected society. Rural society was no longer completely isolated. In addition, the telephone altered the way people socialized with the outside world. The telephone gave people a sense of community and connectivity at long distances; People came to depend on this connectivity physically and psychologically.

The transition to the mass consumer society was further accelerated by the birth of broadcast radio during the 1920’s. The broadcast radio was the outgrowth of the Marconi’s wireless.

With the radio, came the ability to communicate information at great distance without wires between the sender and receiver. Radio brought about some level of family togetherness. The glow of the radio dial, in the dark of the evening, as voices from a far entered the living room, was like story telling around the campfire in ancient times.

The problem child of communication technology, the television, was a natural and inevitable outgrowth of radio and motion picture technologies.

The television is an incredible medium for spreading information to a mass audience. However, the technology demands complete attention and resulted in the vegetative subspecies of humanity aka "the couch potato".

Far from bringing out the best from societies, this communication technology is often criticized as systematically debasing public tastes, as it seeks the lowest common denominator in order to maximize audience size. In addition, it was the first communication technology, which virtually required no involvement from its audience.

So from a broad historical context, writing created permanence; the printing press widened distribution; photograph mastered visual images, the telegraph conquered distance; and the telephone facilitated interactivity. With the advent of the microprocessor in digital computers we were soon to witness the digitalization of all these communication technologies.

The Internet as a Communication Technology

In 1957, the U.S. government formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a segment of the Department of Defense charged with ensuring U.S. leadership in science and technology with military applications. In 1969, they established ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. ARPANET was a network that connected major computers at the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford Research Institute, and the University of Utah. The basic purpose of the ARPANET was to allow continued communication if one or more sites were destroyed in a nuclear attack.

Until the early 1990’s, the Internet was limited to noncommercial uses because its backbone was provided largely by the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the U.S. Department of Energy. With the end of the cold war and development of the World Wide Web more and more independent private networks began to spring up. This permitted the general public to gain access to the Internet.

The advent of the personal computer in the eighties coupled with advances in graphical technologies and decreased cost structures provided the perfect environment for the Internet to thrive in.

By allowing text, pictures, and sound to be transferred between computers through networks, the Internet, has spawned a technological revolution unlike the world has ever seen. We now have a common information space or cyberspace in which society can communicate and share information.

The Internet has transformed basic aspects of our lives: the way we converse and learn; the way we work, play and shop; even the way we participate in political and social life. We exchange messages with people all over the world through cyberspace. The result is a pattern of global communication and cooperation, which is radically changing society.

Just as the agricultural society was transformed by the industrial revolution, the manufacturing-based society is now being transformed by the ‘information’ revolution. Like all revolutions, the transition is not exactly a smooth one.

Using the Internet for social and psychological needs

In addition to communication, more and more people are turning to the Internet to meet important social and psychological needs.

One of the most basic of these social needs is to have a sense of belonging with a group who share similar interests and goals. The Internet caters to this need in the form of electronic venues.

These electronic venues include chat rooms, message boards, newsgroups, instant messaging and of course electronic mail. There are thousands of electronic venues dealing with a whole range of topics from coin collection to the unmentionables. And typically, people switch from venue to venue satisfying different social and psychological needs.

In these electronic venues, people feel that they engage in better quality and forms of social interaction as they would in a real world setting. This so-called ‘quality of communication’ can be attributed to the absence of social cues in a cyber setting. The absence of subtle body language, which we are used in face-to-face encounters, can make people feel less inhibited about what they express and feel.

Cyber socializing has given new meaning to terms such as chatting and messaging. For instance, to most people chatting implies, internet based chatting. Symbols such as :-) Smiling; :-D Laughing; :-} Grin; ;-{) Flirt; :-* Kiss and abbreviations such as *jc* Just curious; *brb* Be right back; *imho*.

In my humble opinion; *lol* Laughing out loud; have become the lingua-franca of the cyber world.

So where is the paradox with the Internet? Some sociologists argue that we have experienced similar social upheavals with the communication technologies of the past. Why should we be concerned about the impact of the Internet? To answer this question we have to compare the speed with which the Internet has penetrated society.

Insert Figure 6 About Here

As Figure 6 illustrates the number of years various communication technologies have taken to penetrate 30% of the population. As you can see the Internet’s pace of adoption eclipses all other technologies that preceded it. The telephone was in existence for 38 years before 30% of the people tuned in: TV took 17 years. The Internet, once it was opened to the general public, crossed the 30% mark in seven years.

Though many of us have already forgotten what the world was like without e-mail. It is amazing that, in no more than a decade, e-mail and browsing the Internet has grown into an essential part of our life. Let me tell you this, by the end of last year there were over 1 billion Internet users in the world.

Can a rapid infusion of such a technology cause problems to society? I think it does. While browsing my father’s vast library yesterday, I came across a rare copy of Dr. Radhakrishnan’s book, Kalki or The future of civilization. Dr. Radhakrishnan writes "...The pace of progress of science has become laterally too fast, and its range too wide and deep for quick adaptation by humans".. He wrote this in 1929.

Futurist philosopher Alvin Toffler talks about this phenomenon as well, and calls it future shock. He defined future shock as a "psychobiological condition induced by subjecting individuals to "too much change in too short a time."

If you think about it, changes in communication technology since the mid 1990s, are taking place at a rapid speed. As a result, parts of society are beginning to exhibit symptoms of confusion.

With Internet-based artificial communication rapidly replacing all other forms of communication; people are losing the ability to distinguish between social interaction in the real world and in cyberspace.

Medical and psychological studies indicate that such cyber-socialising, at the cost of real-world friends, is unhealthy. People are losing the ability to distinguish between the similarities and differences between social interaction on the Internet and in "real life".

In fact, I experienced this first hand a couple of weeks back. A female American student of mine got terribly excited when she heard that I was from Sri Lanka. She came up to me after class and told me that her fiancee was from Watala and whether I knew him. Curious person that I am, I asked her whether he was a student at the university? "No" she said. "Have you been to Sri Lanka"? I asked her. "No", she said. "So, where did you meet him?," I finally asked her. "Oh, I have never met him", came the reply. "We date over the Internet, and he is wonderful."

This is a common social problem today. The exchange of photos online can add fuel to the fire — as most people send the most flattering photo they can find. I’ve heard stories of people who thought they were dating someone 35 years old only to arrive for a date and find someone much older waiting at the table!

In addition to these problems, there are more and more reports on the types of disorders brought on by excessive Internet usage. These disorders can range from false self-perception, depression, mood swings, and bipolar disorders. Spending long-hours online and forging online relationships can actually hurt face-to-face relationships. It can also lead to real world social isolation in terms of Internet addiction.

Internet Addiction on the Rise

Internet addiction has recently entered the social problem lexicon. Inordinate amounts of time spent engaging in various types of Internet activities such as chat rooms, and discussion groups have been cited as having a negative impact on social relationships, marriages, school achievement, work performance, health, and other vital life functions. Given the prediction that 60 percent of households will be connected to the Internet by 2002, Internet addiction is perceived as a possible societal epidemic. To address this increasing concern, The Center for On-Line Addiction (1998) has classified Internet addiction into five specific types:

1. Cybersexual Addiction - Addictions to adult chat rooms or cyberporn.

2. Cyber-relationship Addiction - On-line friendships made in chat rooms, or newsgroups that replace real-life friends and family.

3. Net Compulsions - Compulsive online gambling, online auction addiction, and obsessive online trading.

4. Information Overload - Compulsive web surfing or database searches

Computer Addiction - Obsessive computer game-playing or to programming aspects of computer science.

Thus, we find ourselves in a world transformed by a new communication medium that we are only just beginning to understand. While we take advantage of the multitude of benefits it has to offer, we cannot fail to recognize that there are significant costs as well. As we struggle with this problem, yet another new dimension has emerged. This is the dimension of mobility.

The Dimension of Mobility

We have entered the age of mobile communication in which people use mobile phones and other devices to communicate. In only a few years, the mobile phone has changed from being an exclusive business tool to a device in everyone’s pocket. This little device has fundamentally changed the lives of over a billion mobile phone users in the world. This is because while the fixed telephone eliminated the obstacle of distance, the mobile phone removed the obstacle of location. Mobile phones have given people new personal power. It enables us to be always on call and always in touch.

There are gender differences as well; women tend to value their cell phone as a means of expression and social communication, while men tend to use it as an interactive toy. In addition it has become a male status symbol as well. Men have a tendency to display their cell phones more proudly, using them to display their aggression in front of other men, and almost like a mating ritual in front of women. Anthropologists have categorized mobile phone users behaviour, and compared these behaviours to types of birds. For instance, the Owls, tend to keep their cell phone calls use to a minimum, making and taking only necessary calls. Starlings, on the other hand, tend to be more aggressive, pushing their way through crowds while talking loudly on their mobile phones.

The mobile also gives us something to fiddle with during awkward and boring moments at lectures and meetings. It has become an extension of our bodies, and we feel lost without it.

In addition to speaking on mobile phones, the practice of exchanging short text messages over the mobiles has erupted in Europe and Asia. If you remember, texting over the mobile phones played a major role in overthrowing President Estrada of the Philippines in 2001.

Text messaging has become so popular among teenagers, that sociologists have begun calling them the thumb generation. This is because texting has had a profound effect on the way teenagers use their thumbs. Teenagers use their thumbs to tap out numbers and messages on their mobiles. As a result, they now point and even ring doorbells with their thumb instead of their forefinger. Mobile phones, in short, have altered the way society behaves. And the revolution is only just beginning.

The Emergence of the Ubiquitous Society

The convergence of mobile communications and the Internet has resulted in the mobile information society. In this society, access to the Internet is available to anyone, anytime, anywhere. The mobile information society will reach a critical mass by the end of this year. This is when there will be more mobiles connected to the Internet than computers.

The mobile revolution is and will change the way society live and work. It will result in new services and applications, which will invade our personal life and work.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the microchip spread from the computer into hundreds of other devices, such as washing machines and cars. The next stage in this process is for microchips to gain the ability to communicate and to report on their location. Imagine a telemarketer for a restaurant calling you on your mobile when you are in the vicinity of that restaurant. Yes, that will happen sooner than you think possible! The point to remember though is that the technology to perform these types of location-sensor activities is already available.

In the future such information terminals will become integrated into every aspect of daily life. Sophisticated information network environments will evolve allowing information terminals to be used "anytime, anywhere, by anyone" forming the future ubiquitous network society. Indeed, we ourselves may become these information terminals as advances in miniaturization and nanotechnology quickly become a reality.

What kind of lifestyle should we expect in this ubiquitous network society? In this society for example, an intelligent fridge could send out the grocery-shopping list. Artificial Intelligence based Internet applications will take control of what we do, when we do it, and how we do it.

In the mobile information society, the amount of personal data collected, and traded will increase dramatically. Needless to say, our traditional values of privacy, and security may be threatened. The surveillance state that George Orwell feared in his book 1984 will be tiny compared to the Web we continue to weave around us.

Importance of Achieving the Balance

Communication technology is a permanent feature of our cultural, economic, and social environment. We must strive to understand it, so that we can make it as consistent as possible with our personal and collective values.

Towards that end, my goal here is to present a forward-looking and hopefully unbiased view — what I would call a cyberealist view — of how new communication tools such as the Internet are changing our lives.

The highlights of this lecture are very familiar. Communication Technologies have always possessed the ability to affect change. In the wake of Gutenberg’s printing press, religion was spread, challenged, and debated as never before.

As printing methods improved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, books circulated more widely, and literacy and education blossomed. The scientific advances of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton became widely known.

With the advent of the digitalization, modern technologies such as the Internet and mobile phones have impacted society at a much faster rate. One thing is clear. The rate of infusion of communication technology into society can have greater paradoxical effects on it.

But lets not become paranoid! An individual computer or mobile phone poses no threat. Yet these same devices both assist in making us ‘more connected’ while at the same time encouraging a form of social withdrawal in the process.

The threat to the dignity of society comes from the increase of these little communication tools in our homes, offices and pockets, joined together by invisible networks.

These technologies are permeating our society and changing the way we live and think. The tools are adapting faster than we are. The networks of today are in their embryonic forms, destined to grow into mature structures whose shape and power we cannot yet imagine.

Modern communication technology can and has accelerated our lives. It fosters dependence, which necessitates relief in terms of upgrades, add-ones, and refills! How will society change when the communication technologies we hang on our belts become supercomputers that talk to each other through a wireless mega networks?

Technology is only one of many forces driving human history, and seldom the most important. Technology only gives us tools. Human desires and institutions decide how we use them. It is possible to envisage, evolution of human society in a world of communication networks in perfect symbiosis.

However, social evolution has always been driven by a balance between competition and symbiosis in the past. And so it will be in the future.

And now thinking back, I have come to realize after years of study, searching and pondering, that my mother’s assessment of technology was correct. ‘Moderation, in anything’ she would say. And I would add ‘it is our responsibility, as humans to maintain the societal paradox of communication technologies in equilibrium’.