We all communicate in one or more forms today: email, text messages, phone calls, even a face-to-face conversation — utilized less than ever today. Communication continues to evolve no matter which medium you choose to use. Every one of these mediums started out independent of the Internet, but today, each of them can be accomplished (probably for free) via the Internet. In my mind, this makes the Internet the universal medium for communication.
You may think that email has always depended on the Internet to function. However, email was actually created in 1965 at MIT — the Internet didn’t come into existence until the late 1980s. In its initial form, email was limited to a small group of people on a time-sharing computer system. Only that group of people could email each other, so its usefulness on a global scale was non-existent. When the Internet reached broad acceptance and use in the 1990s, email became an inseparable component that people grew to depend on.
While text messaging and phone calls are not dependent on the Internet like email is today, I have no doubt that they will become so in the not-so-distant future. Currently, one can use services like Google Voice to do both. However, while using Google Voice to make free voice calls to other phones independent of a for-pay service isn’t trivial just yet, Google’s recent purchase of Gizmo5 suggests that it soon might be.
Services like Skype and Google Talk have allowed video chat for quite a while now. That’s about as close to face-to-face as you can get via the Internet with out current level of technology. However, I look forward to the day when we have Star-Trek-style holograms that make it just as realistic to meet with someone on the other side of the planet as it is to drive to the other side of town to have coffee with them. I have no doubt that when humanity creates that technology, it will communicate via the Internet (or some extension of it).
I’m also excited to see what other communication mediums will be created in the years to come.
