Blog #5: Communication Technology

In today’s class, I listened to my fellow HPU students present on different forms of communication that society has relied on throughout the past few centuries.

It was fascinating to see how far we humans have come in terms of communication and technology. I found it interesting how we went from the more still impressive yet rudimentary forms of communications such as the telegram and the printing press and transitioned into more strategic and complex communication tools such as Instagram and Netflix.

Out of all of the communication technologies I learned about today in class, two really caught my attention-carrier pigeons and bluetooth. These are two very different types of communication, but I found them interesting in their own ways.

Carrier pigeons are extremely fascinating, and while I had heard of them before, I pretty much knew nothing about them. The basic idea is that people would raise these pigeons in their home, and then have them sent to the person that they want to communicate with. That person would then receive the pigeon, write a letter, and then attach a canister to the pigeon with the letter inside.

The carrier pigeons are then able to find their way back to the house they were raised in because of two different factors. Firstly, they have a magnetic internal compass that helps them get from point A to point B. Secondly, they have a homing instinct, which is an innate predisposition to return to the place in which they were born and raised.

Bluetooth is a form of communication technology that I am way more familiar with. In fact, I use it every day to stream music in my ears while talking to and from class. One thing I never considered however was the history of its name. Bluetooth was actually the nickname of an old viking known for united Denmark and Norway.

The creators of bluetooth thought of naming their creation after this viking because they believed their invention would help people connect with one another, similarly to how Bluetooth the viking connected two different people groups.

Today, I learned about different forms of communication. Some we use today and some we don’t. I realized I take a lot of things for granted--things like my iPhone, my headphones, and internet browsers like Google. They have made my day-to-day life so much more convenient.