On Communication

In my hand, I hold the library of Alexandria, the Pony Express, Randall McNally atlases, dictionaries of thousands of languages, games beyond reckoning and an all-encompassing news-and-entertainment system which no old-world town crier could ever imagine.

We have no need, anymore, of soap boxes or young boys in knickers traipsing through town shouting out "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!"  Instead, there are tweets, instagram posts, Facebook messages, snapchats, and more. We have a 24 hour news cycle of real news, fake news, and made-for-media news. 

Here in the US, it is up to us what we   follow and how we follow it.  It is up to us what we believe and how we act based on what we know. Sometimes, the media use all sorts of techniques to make us see one viewpoint and close our eyes to others. Sometimes, the media ignore key points or downplay critical elements. But out there, somewhere, there are many voices needing to be heard.

Years ago, this was not the case.

I asked a friend, last night, what her memory was of the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that she didn't have a tv then, or a radio. They were just farmers, and didn't follow the news. It wasn't part of her life, even though it was a real issue in the world.

Many of the survivors spoke of bucolic childhoods, old days on the farms. Some write about town and city days with schools and sweethearts. The only medium I notice regularly mentioned from the days leading up to the war was the ever-occurring newspaper.

Newspapers are by nature monolingual and set in specific intervals of time. They are often local and carry a local viewpoint. Newspapers can be censored much more easily than the wild web.

So, word got out, back then, but much more slowly than today. Word got out, but in bubbles. Word got out through word of mouth and cryptic postcards in which prisoners wrote "Uncle so-and-so is doing fine" when the recipient knew full well that Uncle So-and-so was dead, and so dug deeper into cryptography. Word got out, so slowly, through underground presses.  It took a long time.

What would happen if the Holocaust happened with all of today's media? Would our technology and interconnected world have helped? What about our increased ease of transportation? 

I cannot say.

But, I have an equally important question.

Now that we have all this technology and communication and transportation, how can we allow genocides to continue in the world today? 

We know there is censorship of the media, and fear of speech among restless citizens of threatened populations. Would the fear be less if they knew they had international support?

What can we do to curtail apathy of a populace who would prefer to watch reality TV than consider how they can help real life people?

I do not know the answers but today I ponder these questions.