https://bigthink.com/pessimists-archive/twitter-telegrams/
Telegrams were the first instant messages, allowing people to send short notes rapidly over long distances. Telegraphy was developed in the 19th century and tweets were created about 150 years later, but despite the vast time difference, they were received and critiqued in strikingly similar ways.
Some early reactions to telegrams included one 1858 commentary in The New York Times calling them "superficial, sudden, unsifted" and likely to "render the popular mind too fast for the truth." The exact same criticisms have been leveled at social media today. In both cases, the short, character-constrained nature of the messages was seen as a problem, leading to a lack of depth and context.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 26, @07:32AM (3 children)
There's an important difference: Telegrams cost money. If you have to pay for it, there's an incentive to think twice if it is really worth it to send that message. Were a Twitter message as expensive as a telegram, I'm sure we'd have a lot less issues with it.
There's also another important difference: Telegrams have a single receiver. Twitter messages are public.
Anyway, also today people fear Telegram. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Sunday February 26, @10:55AM (1 child)
This. This right there. Already at 5 insightful, or it would be worth a vote.
Anything that costs money will make people think twice to use. And telegrams were mighty expensive when they came into existence. As a "leisure" activity undertaken for frivolous message transmission, it was at best a toy for the rich because anyone who had to work for their money considered it a tool. Either a very expensive tool that you can't use for anything but "I am dying, come if you want to see me before I croak" or as a tool that was used when slower means of communication would warrant the expense, because the loss or revenue or the damage would offset that expense considerably.
And it doesn't even have to be that expensive. If a Twitter message only costed a cent a piece, we'd be down a considerable number of garbage Twitters.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 26, @04:37PM
Telegrams cost money, but the money they cost was a trivial consideration for the people who wielded socio-political power in the era. What "The Masses" thought and said didn't really matter to them. From their perspective, the fees were mostly a way to ensure that "The People who Matter" would have ready access to the bandwidth, and that the bandwidth would be maintained and grown as needed.
>If a Twitter message only costed a cent a piece, we'd be down a considerable number of garbage Twitters.
Elon would like to hear more about your ideas...
But, seriously, both telegrams and tweets tickle little dopamine generators - a very high reward for a very low effort in both composition and reading of the messages. Further, the brevity of the messages leave them somewhat open for the readers to interpret as they like, which is another little dopamine push because the readers can choose to view the writers more easily as a friend or foe, whichever they prefer.
I might care more about the fate of Twitter if I actually used it. I have probably read 100x more Tweets repeated in other media than I have on Twitter itself, and my lifetime total of sent Tweets is probably under 20, including ~15 that I generated as part of an automated system hobby-toy that I quickly abandoned due to lack of interest in pursuing a project in the medium.
On the other hand, Twitter (still) has hundreds of millions of direct and indirect (like me) readers of content published on the platform, so it has many thousands of "influencers" pursuing that channel as a way to reach "their people." It's relevant in a way that's hard for even a new bull in the china shop owner to completely dismantle, if it were to fall completely it's likely to be replaced with a copycat media to fill the attention vacuum that would be created in its passing.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 27, @07:18PM
(I can envision such an embarrassing telegram in the 1800s)
Okay. Imagine. Ding Dong! (it's not Avon calling) You answer the door. It's a loud obnoxious telegram message boy. Loud and embarrassing. All your parlour guests around the fireplace can hear the telegram while drinking the brandy you served after dinner.
Are you thinking of using Perl? STOP!
A riddle you're trying to unfurl? STOP!
It will set your mind in a whirl! STOP!
When you read your code you will hurl! STOP!
Then the telegram message boy slinks off in the darkness hoping nobody recognizes him.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 5, Funny) by hey_popey on Sunday February 26, @10:17AM (4 children)
https://xkcd.com/1227/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 26, @08:14PM (3 children)
And in the 1700s, before the telegraph, steam engine, etc.
George: "Damn the days of summer are long and hot with not much to do aught watch the crops grow."
Martha: "Be you bored, you may well help with the cooking and cleaning of the home."
George: "Perhaps later dear, there's a new book I have acquired which demands my attention."
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday February 28, @03:32PM (2 children)
Robot vacuums are the best thing, since ever. While it may not work as well for a carpeted house. It sure is nice to be able to just have your house picked up and then push a button and the thing actually cleans the floors for you. Without much, if any intervention necessary. The roombas of the world are literal house-hold science fiction items come true.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 28, @04:23PM (1 child)
The thing that I love most about the robot vacuums is that they clean UNDER things you would rarely if ever bother to clean. When buying new furniture or installing new cabinetry, I now select and design to ensure a Roomba has clearance to get under the thing.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday February 28, @04:44PM
I'm glad that a lot of the things I own already have roomba clearance.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Sunday February 26, @11:50AM
I have seen this actually used in some Chinese steampunk movies and TV series some time ago, so I did some deep digging lookup for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_telegraph_code [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-Corner_Method [wikipedia.org]
https://www.njstar.com/cms/chinese-commercial-telegraph-code-lookup [njstar.com]
https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/history-today-articles/02%202018/15FEB2018%20The%20Chinese%20Telegraph%20Code.pdf?ver=kLlbXqxl_NfOgfcP3dj3rw%3d%3d [nsa.gov]
This four digit encoding is still quite usable for pre-Unicode comm channels like 7-bit IRC, or even 5-bit raw datalinks (military) or classic 20th century teletypes with paper tapes...
Yes, Republican Steampunk is a thriving cultural genre even on communist mainland.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BeaverCleaver on Sunday February 26, @12:19PM (7 children)
A big difference between a telegram and a tweet is that telegrams are not public.*
Telegrams were generally person to person, so it seems more analogous to instant messaging. Twitter, on the other hand, seems all about shouting as loudly as you can to anyone in the vicinity. Back in the 19th century, people who who constantly shouted nonsense on a public street were called "lunatics."
*OK, sure, the telegraph operators could transcribe a telegram and leak it if they really wanted to risk their job. But one couldn't just send a telegram to "the public." Maybe a newspaper editor would publish a tip, at their own discretion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 26, @05:27PM (4 children)
Which might be part of the fear. Whenever a gatekeeper (newspapers, 'the press', media) lose some of their gatekeeping function, they see their power reduced, which naturally will fill them with fear:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 26, @05:43PM (3 children)
Cute, but what actually happens is the opposite. The loudest megaphone held by the crassest loudmouth fills all the "public" space.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 26, @10:21PM (1 child)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27, @01:28AM
I don't think it's that simple. Deep pockets can run news outfits at a loss to give the propaganda a chance to do its work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27, @04:22AM
While true, that is, at best, tangential to the AC comment to which you replied .
Yes, the loudest megaphone drowns out the rest.
But the AC was pointing out that news orgs. would fear "new things" (such as the telegram, and later Twitter) that allow communication without them (the news orgs.) being the middlemen and deciding what is "fit to print".
By losing the power to decide what is "fit to print" those same news orgs. lose the ability to control the narrative and lead their readers to their chosen viewpoint.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 26, @08:17PM (1 child)
*19th century hackers need only tap the telegraph lines anywhere along their route to "read the mail" if they were adept enough to transcribe the dots and dashes of the professional operators.
Undetectable, until the private messages are leaked and those with the skill to read professional telegraph messaging yet not fully employed by professional telegraph companies are rounded up and charged with their obvious crimes.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by BeaverCleaver on Sunday February 26, @11:38PM
Good point, although my original point also stands, that sending telegrams isn't really analogous to a modern tweet that is _intended_ to be broadcast to the public.
I wonder if the telegraph companies back in the day used encryption to prevent eavesdropping? I know wireless Morse code operators certainly did in the 20th century, especially during wartime.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Sunday February 26, @05:04PM (1 child)
What they said.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 27, @07:26PM
But D expressly says [dlang.org] "Features to leave behind: Support for 16 bit computers.". In the days of the telegram, 16 bit computers would seemed very appealing.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...