Communications
When we were kids there was a joke about the
three fastest forms of communication -- "Telephone, telegraph,
tell-a-woman." Groan. Just as we have seen changes in forms
of humor over the last half-century, we have seen great changes
in forms of communication. Many children of today would not even
know what the 'telegraph' was were it not for old Western movies
on television. Most may never have reason to send or receive a
telegram. The new technologies that have evolved make communications
systems a more important design component than ever before. Their
value for making person-to-person contact, exchange of information
and conduct of research is unsurpassed. Most designs will incorporate
one or more of the interconnected systems discussed below.
Telephone
While being the 'oldest' of the modern systems of communication,
the telephone has maintained its place of importance because of
its immediacy of personal contact, reliability, universality,
innovations and adaptability. With the evolution of the cellular
phone and satellite-transmitted connections, the phone has become
unfettered from location and users are theoretically always within
reach of each other. However, the telephone's most important characteristic
is that it provides the platform and infrastructure for many other
communications technologies.
FAX
"What's your FAX number?" Many assume that if one has
a phone one also has access to a FAX machine, a technology that
sends the printed word or graphics over the phone lines by breaking
the image down into digital bits and reassembling them at the
receiving end into a facsimile image. It is a quick and effective
way of transferring information.
Computer
The personal computer, connected to the phone lines through a
modem, has become a powerful communications and information access
interface. Users may connect to another personal computer, a server
computer on a local bulletin board system, a national commercial
server such as America Online or Compuserve, or into the Internet,
a worldwide mesh of computer networks, using a local service.
Communications choices consist of electronic mail, discussion
groups, and research and information retrieval.
E-mail works much like regular mail (now called snail-mail
or s-mail) in that one sends messages to another person and gets
messages back in return. The mail is sent through a computer server
that forwards the mail to a destination address where it is held
until the receiver retrieves it. Messages may be forwarded, sent
to more than one person at a time, and may have text files attached
to them.
Discussion groups are of two main types -- Mailing Lists and
News Groups. There are thousands of these subject-oriented forums
available. To receive discussion material one must specifically
subscribe to the forum in which one is interested. If one joins
a mailing list every message sent to that list will be sent to
the subscriber automatically. If one subscribes to a news group
the discussions (threads) are stored in a central computer and
may be accessed at the user's discretion. In both cases, the user
may just read messages or participate fully in the discussion
by typing in messages. A third type of discussion group allows
users to have interactive, real-time chats either one-on-one or
as a member of a larger 'room' full of participants.
- Research and Information Retrieval
There are several services for retrieval of information. File
Transfer Protocol (FTP) allows material to be downloaded from
computers around the world. Archie, WAIS, Gopher and Veronica
have search and find functions that work on keyword clues from
the user and assist in finding relevant FTP files for transfer.
World Wide Web (WWW) is the most user-friendly of the electronic
services. It incorporates global hypertext allowing a 'web' page
to have text, graphics and the links to an infinite number of
associated pages on other computers around the world.
