It is 1750. To receive out of town communication required a messenger. Otherwise it is all word of mouth.
It is 1850. You can receive mail from the USPS. The first telegraph won’t cross the ocean for another 16 years. Telephones won’t be common for another 30 years in the USA.
It is 1950. If someone called your phone number and you were not home, you could leave a message if you were lucky. The telephone answering machine was invented just 15 years ago. It would still be 23 years until someone proposed email.
It is 2000. Cellphones are still a luxury item for the middle class. Many adults did not have email. The term “blog” is still considered extremely geeky, and having one is even geekier. Video chatting with someone is something you read about happening at big Universities with T1s.
It is 2010. People get mad when you don’t answer your cell. You follow hundreds or maybe thousands of tweets a day. Facebook or Myspace gives you intimate daily updates on the lives of everyone you ever knew. You can’t buy a shirt or eat dinner without being asked for your email address. Your neighbor’s dog now has a blog. Broadband internet is so common that you can video chat with nearly anyone in any country at any time.
It is 2045. Can you imagine?
Never in history have we ever been bombarded with so much communication and it is increasing quickly. Trying to keep up with it all can be a full time job. Huge innovations have moved from happening over 100 years to happening over 10 years. Society is egging us to all participate in these new forms of communication. You can’t watch the news without hearing about Twitter and Facebook.
What is the the default value for communication? Open and receptive to as much data as we can figure out how to share about each-other.