When the doorbell rang in the middle of the night, the 'who could it be at this hour' question ran through everyone's mind. If the voice on the other side of the door said 'telegram' then the curiosity intensified into an electric form of anxiety that raced through the house bringing everyone within earshot to the door. One signed for the sealed envelope, ripped it open and read out the contents, all hearts clogging up one mouth. Sometimes the news was exactly of the kind that made telegrams so feared while on other occasions, telegram said something to the effect of 'Arriving 17th instant Rajdhani with family. Book return 6th May." Of course, one had the more harmless greetings telegrams (number 5 Many Happy Returns of the Day) but those were unlikely to be delivered in the dead of night. By virtue of their speed and stealth, telegrams were messengers of fate, letter bombs that interrupted the placid predictability of life with some sudden and significant new development.
For a technology that now seems rudimentary at best, the telegraph was in fact a truly radical and discontinuous innovation that marked the beginning of the Information Age. Noam Chomsky argues that the shift from sailing ship to telegraph was more radical than from the telephone to the e-mail and it is easy to see why. The telegraph made it possible not only to compress meaning into some rudimentary sound signals that could be sent and received over vast distances but do so wirelessly and in real time. The Morse code allowed the telegraph to move beyond more basic signals into the fullness of language and radio technology freed it from wires. The collapsing of distance that we see as a fundamental attribute of technology today was first made evident in the telegraph which made it possible for different parts of the world to have the same experience at the same time. The ability to unite the world around a moment is a powerful experience that makes our parallel existences palpably simultaneous.
At a time when other modes of communication were unreliable, inaccessible and slow, the telegram was the final recourse available when a message just had to be delivered with a guarantee. In its manner of use, respect for its importance was usually maintained; the telegram was never just another way of reaching someone. The expensiveness of the telegram meant that for most normal people, language would need to rid itself of its finery and communicate in guttural droppings of meaning. Articles, prepositions, conjunctions, were among the casualties of this mode of communication, as words huddled together without the relief of semantic cushions to create hard bits of meaning. Other modes of reaching were far more adept at more leisurely interactions. The telegram delivered the promise of technology without any of its gloss, it murdered distance, but did so without any great finesse. There was clearly a trade-off to be made between speed and the richness of communication which is why the telegram worked best when it was conveying a piece of news with some finality- someone passed the exam, someone else passed away, a trip date got postponed.
In some ways, the telegram in the laconic abruptness of its form, emphasised the fact that the dominant meaning of communication at that time was very different. In that world, relationships were lavished with time, attention and conversation. Postcards and inland letters were deemed to be wasted if every inch on its sides were not filled up with crawling postscripts of sundry kinds. Distance made the urge to stay connected that much deeper, and the fact that typically no message could be exchanged in a time period less than a fortnight at the least, given the slowness of the postal system, meant that we derived disproportionate communication from relatively infrequent contact. Vacations became a time when relationships were tanked up with a couple of months' worth of interaction, which was lived off for the rest of the year, topped up by periodic postcards and letters, which were read aloud and then re-read several times. A trunk call was rare- the difficulty of getting through (particularly because often, it involving one party calling from a Post Office and the other using the neighbour's phone) and the cost involved pretty much ensured that. In any case, when the need was to urgently communicate some bit of information, nothing could beat the telegram.
Unlike the idea of always being connected that has become the norm today- everyone meaningful is either on social media or a text message away- we lived a life only partially illuminated with knowledge. At any given point in time, there were so many aspects of our own life that we had no access to. When someone went abroad, for instance, for long periods of time, one's loved ones had no idea as to what was happening. Any meaningful form of communication was slow, so slow that by the time one received and replied, things could have changed dramatically. Relationships found a way of thriving in this constrained world by substituting imagination and yearning in the place of actual contact. The telegram was a way of ensuring that if it came to the crunch, virtually instant communication was always possible. Armed with this lifeline, the idea of connectivity focused on richness rather than frequency. Every physical contact was heightened by the anticipation that preceded it and the wallowing in memories that followed it. By itself, the telegram is hardly a great loss, but it does also tell us that the world that depended on it has also changed in a fundamental way. That we don't need the telegram any more is a clue to the fact that we are connected all the time, but it may also point out that being connected is not the same as feeling a connection.
For a technology that now seems rudimentary at best, the telegraph was in fact a truly radical and discontinuous innovation that marked the beginning of the Information Age. Noam Chomsky argues that the shift from sailing ship to telegraph was more radical than from the telephone to the e-mail and it is easy to see why. The telegraph made it possible not only to compress meaning into some rudimentary sound signals that could be sent and received over vast distances but do so wirelessly and in real time. The Morse code allowed the telegraph to move beyond more basic signals into the fullness of language and radio technology freed it from wires. The collapsing of distance that we see as a fundamental attribute of technology today was first made evident in the telegraph which made it possible for different parts of the world to have the same experience at the same time. The ability to unite the world around a moment is a powerful experience that makes our parallel existences palpably simultaneous.
At a time when other modes of communication were unreliable, inaccessible and slow, the telegram was the final recourse available when a message just had to be delivered with a guarantee. In its manner of use, respect for its importance was usually maintained; the telegram was never just another way of reaching someone. The expensiveness of the telegram meant that for most normal people, language would need to rid itself of its finery and communicate in guttural droppings of meaning. Articles, prepositions, conjunctions, were among the casualties of this mode of communication, as words huddled together without the relief of semantic cushions to create hard bits of meaning. Other modes of reaching were far more adept at more leisurely interactions. The telegram delivered the promise of technology without any of its gloss, it murdered distance, but did so without any great finesse. There was clearly a trade-off to be made between speed and the richness of communication which is why the telegram worked best when it was conveying a piece of news with some finality- someone passed the exam, someone else passed away, a trip date got postponed.
In some ways, the telegram in the laconic abruptness of its form, emphasised the fact that the dominant meaning of communication at that time was very different. In that world, relationships were lavished with time, attention and conversation. Postcards and inland letters were deemed to be wasted if every inch on its sides were not filled up with crawling postscripts of sundry kinds. Distance made the urge to stay connected that much deeper, and the fact that typically no message could be exchanged in a time period less than a fortnight at the least, given the slowness of the postal system, meant that we derived disproportionate communication from relatively infrequent contact. Vacations became a time when relationships were tanked up with a couple of months' worth of interaction, which was lived off for the rest of the year, topped up by periodic postcards and letters, which were read aloud and then re-read several times. A trunk call was rare- the difficulty of getting through (particularly because often, it involving one party calling from a Post Office and the other using the neighbour's phone) and the cost involved pretty much ensured that. In any case, when the need was to urgently communicate some bit of information, nothing could beat the telegram.
Unlike the idea of always being connected that has become the norm today- everyone meaningful is either on social media or a text message away- we lived a life only partially illuminated with knowledge. At any given point in time, there were so many aspects of our own life that we had no access to. When someone went abroad, for instance, for long periods of time, one's loved ones had no idea as to what was happening. Any meaningful form of communication was slow, so slow that by the time one received and replied, things could have changed dramatically. Relationships found a way of thriving in this constrained world by substituting imagination and yearning in the place of actual contact. The telegram was a way of ensuring that if it came to the crunch, virtually instant communication was always possible. Armed with this lifeline, the idea of connectivity focused on richness rather than frequency. Every physical contact was heightened by the anticipation that preceded it and the wallowing in memories that followed it. By itself, the telegram is hardly a great loss, but it does also tell us that the world that depended on it has also changed in a fundamental way. That we don't need the telegram any more is a clue to the fact that we are connected all the time, but it may also point out that being connected is not the same as feeling a connection.
Source:-The Times of India
