The Toolshed Home: The Fifth Revolution

The Communication Toolshed

- A way to move information without locomotion
- Telephone – better communication without transportation; communication of sound;
weakness: limited
- Phonograph record – entertainment by sound
- Published photograph
- Improved printing (form of books), magazine, newspaper, and mail services
- Radio – because motion picture (movies) required people to leave their homes for
information, radio had its “golden age” at that same time; it came directly into our
homes; free entertainment
- Commercial television

What makes a house a home?

- Televisions and radios could wake us up and can put us to sleep; kept us company
- Cable TV
- Computer & modem (for internet use), communications satellite dish, e-mail, facsimile,
answering machines contributed to the equipping of toolshed to become an attractive
proposition
- Newspapers were tossed, magazines were stuffed, books sat on shelves
- People are eager to “catch up” if their tools were out of date
- In the second half of the 20th century, “tools of communication were what really made
a house a home”

Contacts Decrease
- People spend more time and money on home entertainment
- Physical contact decreases
- We look forward to technology bringing content
- Entertained without entertaining
- Socialization declined, membership in orgs fell, decreased participation in civic
associations and volunteer work
- E.g. when watching tv with friends, communion is with the screen
- Growing isolation from close, attentive interaction with other people; sacrifice of
interpersonal contact --- because technologies may eliminate the need for face-to-face
interaction, because if you have these on your home, there is little reason to seek
diversion outside

Extending the Toolshed Home

- Personal media extend the toolshed home
- French architect Le Corbusier – described the modern home as a “machine for living”
- Communication devices carry us mentally outside the machine
- In the place of human intimacy, emotional bonds have grown (i.e. fictional characters
receive gifts, fans stalking actresses); violence on the screen is permission for imitative
violence on the streets, screen sex suffuses thought
- “at its most functional, the toolshed home can be dysfunctional indeed”
 Problems with Heavy Media Usage
- Heavy use of media leads to alienation--- lack of emotional and physical contact,
increased amount of solitary behavior, reduced physical activity, overeating, etc.
- Youthful dependence
- Convergence of toolshed home escalates quickly; shows no signs of diminishing

Home Mail Delivery

Free Home Delivery
- Before American Civil War – post office system to pick up mail letters and parcels
- Cleveland 1863, Joseph Briggs (assistant postmaster) – idea of free home delivery
- Joseph Briggs was “appalled at the sight of anxious wives, children, and relatives
waiting in the long lines at the local post office for letters from soldiers off fighting
the Civil War”
- By 1890, 454 American cities had free home delivery
- 1879 Postal Act – lowered mailing cost; newspaper and magazines were also home
delivered
- 1885-WW1 – 1 penny a pound
- Free rural delivery (1896)
- The horse-drawn wagon gave way to automobile; Pony Express

Parcels, Catalogs, and Junk Mail

- Parcel post started in 1913
- Politically explosive issue; federal government vs private express services
- Parcel post – huge boon to farming (providing materials, products, etc) but did not
achieve a promised goal: “farm-to-table”
- Parcel post doomed the business of many storekeepers; a new tool of communication
displaced something worth keeping
- Direct (“junk”) mail – enabled advertisers and others to reach the people in their homes at
lower rates

Changes
- Amount of mail per household grew, number of households grew
- Mail trains and buses were equipped as rolling post offices
- Dependence on railroads declined, dependence on airplanes increased
- 1911 – first experimental mail flights
- 1918 – permanent mail flight services
- 1920 – introduction of meter-system
- 1963 – ZIP (Zoning Improvement Plan) codes were introduced
- 1983 – ZIP-plus-4 and barcodes, federal govt subsidies ended
- 1970 – Postal Reform Act; US Postal Service as an independent establishment;
abolishment of Postmaster General
- Post emblem – from post rider to eagle
- Variety of computer machines replaced handling done by a postal employee
- 1988 – a govt brochure was sent to 107 million addresses
- 1990 – census forms were mailed
- 1996 – approx. 600 million pieces of mail were handled daily
New Uses for Phones
- Telephone – hallmark of the modern world
- Transmissions of electronic mail, images on the WWW, bit-mapped facsimile images,
reams of date from online databases
- Thousands of inventions have improved the telephone system
- Coaxial cable – transmit computer data
- Touch tone (1963) – analog to digital signals for the improvement of clarity, microwave,
satellite communication, and fiber optics
- Pacific Link fiber optic cable (1989) – 40,000 phone calls at a time
- Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) – converted analog to digital signals for
more efficient transmission of telephone calls, fax, computer, and video

Telephone Company Reorganizations

- Birth of private enterprise, telephone networks
- 1996 – Telecommunication Reform Act
- Telephone companies organized to transmit specialized news, sports, and stock market
reports, electronic Yellow Pages, etc
- Telephone companies were shifting from a primary reliance on POTS (Plain Old
Telephone Service)

Cellular Phones
- After WW2 – mobile telephone service began
- Walkie-talkies for short-distance communication
- Cellular automobile telephones
- Portable fax machines
- Portable phone calls (between any two spots on earth)
- Ultimate goal: allow any two people anywhere on earth with pocket phones to talk to one
another with the clarity that will attend digital communication
- 1993 rumor – emitted radio waves were causing brain cancer
- Pagers – developed by Motorola; radio network, to download written information, 15
messages of 120 alphanumeric characters (beeper number)

Pocket Phones
- PCS (Personal Communication Service) – digital; uses frequencies; voice quality is
superior; small enough to fit into a shirt pocket
- Mobile telephones are an extension of the toolshed home
- Cellular telephone or cellphone (1983)
- Pocket phones have quickly gone from novelty to necessity

The New Picturephones

- Bell Laboratories (1924) – transmitted pictures over telephone wires
- Prototype of picturephone (1964) – fuzzy pictures; commercial failure
- Picturephone was exhibited in Disneyland and world’s fairs, did not catch the public’s
eye because of high operating costs, low quality pictures
- Video teleconferencing – return of picturephones; advantage of face-to-face
communication
A Variety of Uses
- Telemarketing – organized selling by telephone
- Free the telephone owner from the need to remain at home to receive messages
- Electronic voice messaging (EVM) – voice mail system; allows leaving of recorded
messages
- Caller ID – guards the customer’s privacy by identifying the caller’s number

Reaching Out Without Touching

- Telephone extends conversation to unseen people but at a cost to the deeper interaction of
face-to-face communication
- Maintain contacts without personal meetings
- “Reach out and touch someone”