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On five revolutions in the history of human communication

Shao Peiren

Hangzhou University School of Journalism and Communication

There have been five revolutions in the history of human communication-language communication, writing communication, printing communication, electronic communication and interactive communication (multi-functional information communication with computers as the main body and multimedia as the auxiliary). Every communication revolution has played an important role in promoting social progress and bringing mankind into a new realm and era. The dominant position of each country or region in communication will inevitably lead to the dominant position in competition. It warns us that we must actively participate in the communication revolution and attach great importance to the development, introduction and application of communication technology, otherwise the price paid by the country will be extremely huge.

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The first revolution in the history of human communication-the creation of language-occurred 654.38 million years ago; Man invented writing around 3500 BC, which was the second communication revolution. In the third communication revolution, China people first invented printing in the early Tang Dynasty. 1844, mankind carried out the fourth broadcasting revolution and ushered in the dawn of telecommunications; From 65438 to 0946, computers appeared in the fifth communication revolution.

In the history of human communication, the great effects of five communication revolutions not only changed what people saw and heard in the past, but also profoundly influenced what people think and do today. Therefore, it is undoubtedly of far-reaching historical and practical significance to analyze and study the causes, processes and significance of five communication revolutions in the history of human communication.

Language communication: the first communication revolution

The emergence of language is the direct driving force for the first spread of revolution. So, when and how did language come into being? Philip? Lieberman concluded in The Evolution of Human Language (1984) that the distant ancestors of human beings began to "speak" at some time about 90,000 years ago and began to use language at some time about 35,000 years ago. Robert? The inference of Finn (1985) is slightly different. As for how language is produced? Various speculations can be described as varied: "Wang Wang" thinks that speech is formed by imitating natural sounds such as dog barking; The "Hum Yo" school believes that speech is formed by the sound made by a group to coordinate their actions when they are attached to heavy physical labor; The "exclamation" school believes that language is produced by the accidental expression of feelings (pain, happiness, fear and sadness); The "singing" school believes that language evolved from songs that spread feelings and happy events. Among many speculations, Engels' hypothesis that "language originated from * * * accompanying labor" [1] has received the least criticism in more than 100 years.

Regarding the emergence of language, we tend to assume and guess that it originated from labor, but it is not limited to collective labor; It appears after simple labor and before making tools, not during or after making tools. Obviously, labor not only exercises the hands, but also exercises the brain. At the same time, it is also the source of human accumulated experience and developed knowledge. To make tools, it is not enough to have dexterous hands and developed brains, but also to have enough experience and knowledge. However, the accumulation and development of experience and knowledge cannot be accomplished by any ape or person. It must be realized through information transmission and exchange among countless individuals. At that time, the best means to spread information was only language.

When human beings created language, language became a symbol of human beings, a tool for human communication and a powerful weapon for human beings to know and change the world. According to archaeological findings, in the long evolutionary history of mankind, the first Neanderthals died out mysteriously without natural and man-made disasters, but farmers in Kroma later became the most direct ancestors of mankind. A very powerful inference is that the former has no language, while the latter has created language. Language saved and helped farmers in Kroma, and human beings got rid of the barriers of animal signal transmission and embarked on the road of human language transmission. Language communication in the first communication revolution made personal experience and knowledge shared by everyone, and the cultural accumulation of predecessors was inherited by future generations. It is in this situation that our ancestors learned to drill wood for fire, treat diseases with herbs, preserve food, raise animals, cultivate food, sacrifice to gods, and also mastered high-knowledge technologies such as pottery, textile and ironmaking. Without language communication, these changes would not have happened. "Society will stop production, it will collapse and it will not exist as a society." 〔2〕

Writing Communication: The Second Communication Revolution

In the second communication revolution, human beings invented writing and began to enter the era of writing communication. In the past, language communication was passed from person to person by word of mouth and memorized by heart, which could not be "spread to Wan Li for a hundred years" and could not guarantee that information would not be distorted, deformed, reorganized or lost in communication. Therefore, the invention of characters and its application in document records can be described as a great pioneering work in the history of human communication. On the one hand, it guides mankind from the "barbaric era" to the "civilized era", on the other hand, it realizes the real transcendence of language communication from a long time and a vast space.

When it comes to writing, Egyptians owe it to the God of Wisdom, Babylonians to the God of Fate, Greeks to Hermes, the messenger and messenger of Olympus, and only China owes the invention of writing to himself-Cang Xie. Now, we don't need to make all kinds of guesses. Underground objects and literature records have repeatedly shown us the earliest existence of words. Just like language, characters were not first formed in one or two places, nor were there only a few words, but one thing is the same: they all evolved from the experience of ancient pictures or cave pictures. In other words, text comes from pictures. About 3500 BC, in ancient Egypt, Crete and China, "hieroglyphs" and "hieroglyphs" first appeared. They draw a word, which means a word. When several pictures are combined, a story or event is formed. In Shang Dynasty, China people created "hieroglyphics", which were carved on tortoise shell bones and called "Oracle Bone Inscriptions". These characters are basically patterned and expressive, and some of them are simple pictures (such as the characters of the sun, the moon, mountains and Sichuan). After further development, the later writing forms such as finger, sound and enlightenment can be formed.

Since the emergence of standardized writing, human beings can not only use it to record spoken language, describe events and disseminate information, but also repeatedly read and slowly interpret the information left by people from distant places or long dead, so as to preserve and inherit the accumulated spiritual wealth and cultural heritage of human beings without worrying, thus spending more time processing existing information and making plans for the future.

In the early days of writing and communication, hieroglyphs or hieroglyphs have been divided into symbol-syllable system (such as English and French) and word-ideographic system (such as Chinese and Japanese), so their functions and advantages are different. Studies show that English and French are easier to learn, use and change, which may lead to westerners' spiritual tendency to pay more attention to change and development. It takes a long time for China and Japanese to master thousands of words and use them to read relatively simple and popular articles, which is quite consistent with the deep feelings of the orientals for stability, unity and nostalgia for the past. However, although Chinese and Japanese are not easy to learn and master, once you have the reading ability, your brain will react to the characters in the ideographic system faster than those in other systems. The study of Koguchi (1996) by a professor at Tokyo University of Electric Technology further points out that in the same ideographic system, the response speed of human brain to Chinese characters is three times that of pseudonym (Japanese). He said that when people know Chinese characters, they can directly understand the meaning from the form without going through the process of multi-tone conversion, which has the advantage of fast reading that other characters do not have. In addition, Chinese characters don't change with the change of spoken language, so people can understand them sometimes although they don't understand (such as dialects). Therefore, in a sense, Chinese characters have become a special coagulant for Chinese national unity and a potential force for social harmony, tranquility and stability. This is a great contribution that our ancestors never expected when they invented writing.

In the second communication revolution, the writing medium gradually changed from heavy stones and mud to light tortoise shells, animal bones, wooden boards, bamboo slips and soft cotton, light sheepskin, silks and paper, and the writing tools changed from branches and sticks to stone knives and iron knives for lettering, and then to writing brushes. These changes reflect how far westerners can go in spreading the civilization of China people at that time. For these, in the words of Shi Lamu (1982), "it is one of the great events that shocked the earth in history."

Derfler (198 1) fully affirmed the achievements of China people in the invention of characters, and then wrote: "At the same time, China people are ahead of the West in another invention-printing."

Print Communication: The Third Communication Revolution

The invention of printing not only brought dawn to China's civilization, but also brought dawn to Europe and the whole world, which brought great changes to human society and led human communication into a brand-new era of mass communication.

In the past, due to the complexity of the media, the complexity of symbols, the difficulty of reproduction and the monopoly of communication, book knowledge was only in the hands of a few people, and written media such as bamboo slips and silk books were only circulated in the upper class. Only the appearance and spread of printing broke the monopoly of knowledge and the privilege of communication of a few people, broke through the dark medieval religious cage, started the Renaissance, and then led to the industrial revolution.

Printing originated from China rubbings in 200 AD, and block printing was invented by China in the early years of the Tang Dynasty (627-649). During the reign of Tang Changqing, Bai Juyi's works were often "edited (printed) and sold in the market" (Tang? Yuan Zhen, 824). The earliest printed matter in the world is the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist sutra printed by China Tang Xiantong in the ninth year (868). During the Qing Dynasty of the Northern Song Dynasty (1041-1048), Bi Shē ng @ ① invented movable type printing. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, China's printing technology, together with other inventions, spread to the west with the Mongolian army. Many years later, after more than 20 years of exploration and research, the German blacksmith Gutenberg invented the lead movable type and hand printing equipment, and printed the 42-line Bible for the first time in 1456.

With the rapid development of printing industry,1the end of the 5th century1the beginning of the 6th century, almost all major cities in Europe had printing houses, and the printing and communication industries became increasingly prosperous. The appearance of printed matter has greatly stimulated people's thirst for knowledge and promoted the development of education, the popularization of culture, the enlightenment of science and the progress of society. On the other hand, the improvement of public cultural knowledge has led to a greater demand for printed media such as religion, science, philosophy and literature books, which has formed a virtuous circle and accelerated the collapse of feudalism and the birth of capitalism in Europe.

According to American sociologist Charles? In the book "Social Organization" (1909), Cooley believes that newspapers, books and magazines, as new mass media, not only remove the barriers of people's isolation from each other, but also affect the way of community interaction, promote major changes in social organizations and functions, and even permanently change the mental outlook and psychological structure of those users. In a word, the revolution of printing and communication has brought unprecedented profound changes to all aspects of human society.

Telecommunication: The Fourth Communication Revolution

For thousands of years, human beings have always dreamed of having two "ears" and a pair of "clairvoyant eyes", breaking through the limitations of time and space and obtaining distant information quickly and truly; I also dream that my voice and image can be recorded, spread thousands of miles and flow for a hundred years. This was once thought to be a fantasy. However, since 1844, American Morse invented the telegraph, 1876, Bell invented the telephone, 1877, Edison invented the phonograph, 1882, French Marie invented the camera according to China's lamp shadow principle, and then movies, radio and television appeared one after another.

In the fourth communication revolution of mankind, the telecommunication with radio and television as the main body not only completely broke through the time and space restrictions, so that information can spread rapidly in Wan Li, but also got rid of the shackles of transportation of necessary materials (books, newspapers and periodicals) in printing communication (delivering printed materials to readers through people and vehicles), and opened up a convenient and efficient air channel for information exchange. In particular, once radio and television are inserted into the wings of satellite broadcasting, this kind of communication is no longer the usual mass communication, but the ubiquitous and ever-present transnational communication, even the global communication. Therefore, telecommunication is being regarded as a symbol war after weapons war and an information war after military war, and it is bound to intensify with the progress of communication technology and become a tool for powerful countries to compete for hegemony.

At the same time, telecommunication communication does not push people to information like printing communication, but pushes information to people. Telecommunication communication is "a way for human beings to transcend literacy barriers and jump into mass communication without literacy needs." Rogers, 1988). Television is a combination of sound, light, electricity, sound, words and form. As soon as it appeared, it shone brilliantly, which once made newspapers and radio stations feel ashamed and had no way to call for help, for fear of falling into disaster. In fact, today's newspapers, radio and television have formed a tripartite confrontation in the field of news communication. They have their own characteristics, influence each other, help each other, and jointly contribute to the cause of human communication. I believe this trend will continue.

Interactive communication: the fifth communication revolution

Interactive communication refers to the information exchange activities with computers as the main body and multimedia as the auxiliary, which deal with various functions including capture, operation, editing, storage, exchange, projection, printing and so on in a dialogue way. Because it refers to the combination and interaction of various data and characters, charts, animations, music, languages, images, movies and video signals on the computer, we regard the birth year of the world's first computer host "Eniac" successfully developed by eckert and others in 1946 as the era of the fifth communication revolution. Then, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite in 1957; The United States 19 69 realized computer docking, and 1980 formed the Internet; During the period of 1994, various developed countries put forward "information superhighway plans" one after another, and China also announced to follow up. In the past 50 years, computers have been updated faster and faster. At first, it was changed every four years, and then it was changed once a year, while 1995 was changed for two generations, that is, after 486, it developed into 586 (Pentium) and 686 (high-energy Pentium). Personal computers are getting smaller and cheaper, but they have more functions and are more convenient to operate. Nowadays, computers and some multimedia systems have entered thousands of households and ordinary people. It is estimated that by the year 2000, computers will be used in many ordinary families in all walks of life and all over the world. In this communication revolution, computers, together with all kinds of software and multimedia (such as telephones, video recorders, tape recorders, radios, televisions, fax machines, printers, game machines, etc.). ) will become the main media for people to comprehensively deal with interpersonal communication, organizational communication, mass communication, transnational communication and even global communication. Mankind has entered the information society and is about to enter a new era of all-round communication.

The biggest difference between interactive communication and traditional print communication and electronic communication is that it is formed on the basis of highly networked telephone, so in addition to other communication characteristics, it also has its own characteristics such as initiative, participation, dialogue and operability. In the past, people just passively looked, listened and looked at what they didn't hate. The communicator actively pushed information to the audience, and the audience passively turned on the "switch" to wait for the arrival of information. In interactive communication, people must actively seek and chase information and ask for information from databases, electronic libraries and video centers. In the past, the audience's participation and communication in communication was extremely low, while interactive communication required people to have high personal participation, that is, not only to actively select, find and request information, but also to actively transmit information to the "information superhighway", or to exchange information through "e-mail", or to hold meetings, remote consultations and cooperative research through the Internet, or even to copy the same document from the network outside Wan Li. In addition, various media in interactive communication will be organically combined and integrated into an integrated multi-functional multimedia computer, and major communication organizations (such as post offices, newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, film companies, libraries, etc. ) will also be orderly aggregated into a loose super information exchange system. Interactive communication and information revolution are entering a "critical state" and a brand-new society is coming. The new society embraces the whole world and interacts with all mankind. The emergence and development of every communication technology is shortening time and space, eliminating cultural differences and expanding ideas.

Conclusion: Main viewpoints and their inferences

Through the description and analysis of five communication revolutions in the history of human communication, the main viewpoints and inferences of this paper are as follows:

Judging from the state of five communication revolutions, we think that there are four states that should be paid attention to by communication scholars: (1) The pace of human communication revolution has been in an accelerated state. It took 2 million years to evolve from animal communication to human language communication, 95,000 years from language communication to writing communication, and about 4,000 years from writing communication to printing communication, while it only took 1200 years from printing communication to telecommunication communication, and the time from telecommunication communication to interactive communication was even shorter, only 1002, while interactive communication was only 50 years. It can be seen that the pace of communication revolution and the innovation of communication technology and means are developing in a trend of gradual acceleration, faster and faster, and shorter intervals. (2) Communication symbols, media and communication technology have always developed in a superimposed state. That is, after the outbreak of the new communication revolution, the means of communication used by mankind in the old communication revolution will not be abandoned, but will always appear in the new communication activities with a new look. Their survival and development do not seem to follow the law of natural selection, but seem to be more in line with the principle of interaction and mutual assistance. Because written communication has not eliminated language communication, and telecom communication has not excluded print communication, the development of interactive communication seems to have integrated various forms and means of communication. (3) The superposition state leads to the integration state. For example, telephone is the fusion of language transmission and telegraph transmission, broadcasting is the fusion of telephone and phonograph, television is the fusion of radio and film, and the development of computer will fuse all media together. (4) The growth and accumulation of information and knowledge develop in a pyramid shape. According to statistics, the scale of libraries doubles every 14 years and increases by 140 times every century. /kloc-at the beginning of the 0/4th century, the library of the University of Paris had a collection of 1380 volumes, which was the largest library in Europe at that time. Now there are 12 libraries in the world with more than 8 million books. At present, 500,000 kinds of books are published every year in the world, and a new book is published every minute on average. Scientific knowledge is growing faster and faster. In the past, human knowledge doubled every 10- 15, but now it doubles every 3-5 years. Someone once made a statistical analysis of American chemical abstracts, and found that it takes 30 years to reach the1million abstracts, the second1million abstracts takes 18 years, the third1million abstracts takes 4 years, and the fourth1million abstracts. According to statistics, more than 80% of all human scientific and technological knowledge was produced in this century. [3] Obviously, this state and the above three states are complementary and mutually causal.

Judging from the results of five communication revolutions, each communication revolution has brought mankind into a new realm and a new era. (1) Language communication is an important feature of human beings and the coagulant of society. It has saved mankind, enabled mankind to exchange information and accumulate knowledge, thus entering human society from the animal world and civilized society from barbarism. (2) Text communication enables human beings to fix or record events and their own experiences, stories and thoughts, and spread them beyond the limitations of time and space. Liang Heng (1996) believes that written language is still a part of national life. Internally, it is the glue that blends national feelings; Externally, it is a barrier to resist foreign cultural aggression. (3) Print communication broke the communication privilege of a few people, which led to the popularization of culture and education, and made human beings enter the mass communication era from the interpersonal communication era. (4) Telecommunication leads mankind from domestic communication to international communication. (5) Interactive communication is to transform the previously independent single communication into comprehensive communication, and to transform the single-function media into multi-functional media, bringing human beings from the industrial society into the information society. Information has become the symbol of social wealth and the "nuclear energy" of social operation. It can be seen that every communication revolution not only greatly improves the communication ability of human beings, but also brings unprecedented great changes to human beings from material to spiritual.

Judging from the interactive relationship between the five communications revolutions and social progress, we think that the communications revolution has a great impetus to social progress. (1) Every time the communication revolution breaks out, it brings new opportunities and opens up new space for human survival and development. (2) The revolution spread by human beings and the progress of social civilization not only promote each other, but also synchronize with each other, which is basically proportional to the pace and frequency. (3) The place or country where the communication revolution first took place not only has a high degree of social progress and civilization, but also has obvious advantages in competition, such as Kroma farmers in the era of language communication, ancient Egyptians and Greeks in the era of writing communication, China people in the era of printing communication, and western developed countries in the era of telecommunication communication and interactive communication. (4) The advantages in communication will inevitably lead to the advantages in culture, so in the face of the cultural aggression of developed countries, weak countries have little power to fight back. In this way, the culture of small countries will first be integrated into the cultural torrent of neighboring developed countries, and further competition will gradually form several regional cultures (such as Asian culture with Confucianism as the core, Middle East culture with Islam as the core, and Western culture characterized by flaunting freedom and democracy). All this warns us that we must actively participate in the communication revolution, attach great importance to the development, introduction and application of communication technology, and at the same time strengthen the research on human communication activities. Otherwise, the price paid by the country will be extremely huge.