This document provides a brief history of communication and collaboration technologies from ancient cave paintings to modern and future technologies. It traces the evolution from early pictograms to alphabets, the development of writing materials like papyrus, important innovations like the telegraph, telephone and internet, and explores emerging technologies like virtual and augmented reality, haptic interfaces, and telepresence.
1. HISTORY OF
COLLABORATION
&
COMMUNICATION
IN ANCIENT TIMES
THE INDUSTRIAL AGE
THE ELECTRONIC AGE
IN THE FUTURE...
THAT’S YESTERDAY AND
TOMORROW. FOR THE HERE
AND NOW, CALL ARKADIN.
CAVE PAINTING
Early art has been found in Cantabria in
Spain, Lascaux in France, and various
sites across Australia and Asia. It might
seem primitive, but these images were
the start of representing human thoughts
in a form that would outlast their artist.
Perhaps the greatest idea of all time.
HIEROGLYPHICS
By 2,890 BC, the Dynasty II civilisation
of Egypt took pictures to the next level:
combining them in sequence to form
simple sentences. Communication turned
from single moments into narratives.
PAPERWORK
Back in the Nile Valley, the invention of
papyrus made communication portable.
Ideas could be carried by another, to
different places, enabling contracts and
agreements. The first known dates back
to 2,260 BC.
THE TELEPHONE
Alexander Graham Bell’s terse “Mr.
Watson--come here--I want to see you”
message signalled the start of real-
time communication and collaboration.
Lesson to be learned? To be an innovator
in communication, it helps to be named
Alexander.
COMPUTERS
Forget Turing (who came later) and
Babbage (who couldn’t get his to work.)
Many agree the first programmable
computer was the Z1, by Konrad Zuse. At
1000kg, you’d have had trouble fitting it
into your briefcase.
BACK TO
THE FAXER
A hundred-years-plus after Bain,
someone had the bright idea of
connecting image-scanning to the
telephone network. The important idea?
CCITT, and the way it encouraged use of
shared standards for communication.
MOBILE PHONES
“I’m on the train” became the business
world’s rallying cry, some time after
Motorola’s Martin Cooper risked a hernia
by making a call on the first mobile
handset. Real-time communication was
now footloose and fancy-free.
VIDEO
CONFERENCING
Videophones had been prototyped, but
the innovation of Bell Labs was a codec:
software that compressed data-heavy
images to fit down telephone lines.
That’s why everybody had a videophone
in their home by 1990. Oh, wait...
THE WEB
Tim Berners-Lee turned onscreen text
into shareable web pages during one
busy summer at CERN. The idea had a
fine pedigree: adopting a standard (called
HTTP) for displaying the written word
onscreen that worked irrespective of the
device you were viewing it on.
VIRTUAL REALITY
Google’s Glass and Oculus Rift presage a great future for
headsets. Beaming 3D video direct to your eyes, they can take
you into whole new worlds… or augment your existing one. The
first prototype launched in 2011.
WRIST PHONES
As mobile technology shrinks, the natural place for information
communication is heading back to your wrist. Following a user’s
hand and body movements, it leverages the truism that a great
deal of communication is in body language.
TELEPRESENCE
This year, the first medical operation was performed by a
surgeon not in the operating theatre, performing his work by
robot instruments from afar. That’s where communication is
going; not just talking there, but being there.
THE TELEGRAPH
As the West was being won, vast
lengths of copper wire followed it,
starting with Harrison Dyar’s first. While
communication was limited to the simple
taps of Morse code, it provided a means
for people separated by thousands of
miles to exchange information at short
notice.
CHINESE
IDEOGRAMS
Early Chinese society carved symbols
into bone. Characters for the sun,
moon, and harvest quickly morphed
into simpler shapes. Communication no
longer imitated reality, It was the start
of writing.
THE ALPHABET
Borrowing from the Phoenicians, the
ancient Greeks abandoned ideograms
in favour of symbols that represented
sounds. A small number of characters
could combine in countless ways, turning
oral history into a permanent record.
FAX MACHINES
Alexander Bain’s mechanical scanner
allowed documents to be not just
communicated but copied. And yes: the
fax machine was invented before the
telephone. And from then on, there was
no let-up.
THE PAGER
Ping, ping! Al Gross’s 1949 prototype led
to millions of people wearing strange
beeping devices on their belts by the
80s. Although millions cursed his memory
at the lack of excuses when they missed
a meeting.
TELEVISION
John Logie Baird’s ghostly “televisor”
image looked spooky, but it enabled
another key feature of modern
communication and collaboration:
broadcasting. Although we don’t know
what he’d have made of Gogglebox.
THE HOLOGRAM
2D images became 3D virtual sculptures,
thanks to Dennis Gabor’s work with
lasers and the optical properties of new
materials. The hologram’s main use
in communication, however, has been
limited to a plot device on British comedy
show “Red Dwarf”.
SMART WATCHES
In the 80s, the simple clock on your
wrist became an alarm, diary, barometer,
thermometer... and a hundred other
communicative functions. Being late was,
briefly in business, not an option.
THE TABLET
Devices like the Microwriter and Apple’s
Newton planted a seed that wouldn’t
grow much further until the Noughties:
the idea that a portable device could
store and connect to information sources
around the world.
THE
SMARTPHONE
It’s a little-known fact that today’s
smartphone was concepted by Big Blue
IBM in the early 90s. A handheld device
that acted as phone, address book, and
notepad. Fancy that.
HAPTIC INTERFACES
VR will let us see new worlds; haptic, or “touch-based”
technology, will let us grab onto them too. Technology like
Second Sight affixes adhesive pads to a user’s limbs, giving
them an embodied form in a disembodied world.
POCKET WIDESCREENS
Mobile devices may not be limited by their physical size.
Technologies like screen sharing and mini-projectors that turn
any nearby wall or screen into your workspace are already on
the market.
40,
000
50
00
22
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http://history-computer.com/
ModernComputer/Basis/scanner.
html
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YEARS BC?
30,000
20,000
10,000
2450
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1850
1860
1870
1930
1932
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1960
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1971
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1983
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1834
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BC
BC
BC
BC
http://www.angela-jooste.com/
blog/2015/9/16/salvador-dali-alice-cooper
http://www.slashgear.com/casio-to-host-retro-smartwatch-museum-
exhibition-04386732/
[Enjoy work, enjoy life, enjoy sharing]