Radio, Television, Internet (Research Paper Sample)

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Media
Television
The development of media like radio, television, motion pictures, and the Internet has created an information explosion that has transformed the amount of information available to everyone. People can be entertained and educated in their own homes by radio, television, and the Internet. They can go to the cinema and watch films from all over the world. These forms of media have transformed the way people live, work, learn, and play. They have caused people to change the way they behave and increased the amount of information available. In 1989, a sociologist said that “by the time today’s kindergartners graduate from high school, the amount of knowledge in the world will have doubled four times. The Class of 2000 will be exposed to more information in one year than their grandparents encountered in their entire lives. They
will have to assimilate more inventions and more information than have appeared in the last 150
years” (Celtrone 65). Television and the Internet have been especially influential in shaping the way people live.
Television has a long and interesting history and is the result of the work of many scientists. It was never one person’s vision (TV History 1). It “was actually invented long before the technology to make it a reality came into being” (Historical Periods in Television 1). The first still image was transferred in 1862 when “Abbe Giovanna Caselli invented his Pantelegraph and became the first person to transmit a still image over wires” (Bellis 1). This work was continued by “scientists and inventors who were working on the possibility of seeing by electricity throughout the late nineteenth century when Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were working on their inventions”(Historical 1).
The “'first generation of television sets were not entirely electronic. The display (TV screen) had a small motor with a spinning disc and a neon lamp, that worked together to give a blurry reddish-orange picture about half the size of a business card! The period before 1935 is called the "Mechanical Television Era" (Television 1). In the late twentieth century television became one of the major sources of information for people with every important event being captured on it. “Every major happening is now captured by television, or it's not a major happening. Politics and politicians are determined by how they play on television. Public knowledge, charity, humour, fashion trends, celebrity and consumer demand are all subject to its critical influence. More than the aeroplane or the nuclear bomb, the computer or the telephone, TV has determined what we know and how we think, the way we believe and how we perceive ourselves and the world around us” (Anthony 1).
The Internet
The Internet, even more than television, has transformed people’s lives in ways that people could not have imagined even 20 years ago. It has increased the sheer amount of information that is available at the touch of a button to every individual with a computer. It has revolutionized the way people learn, the way information is stored and accessed and the way people perform at work. “The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities and represents one of the most successful examples of the benefits of sustained investment and commitment to research and development of information infrastructure. Beginning with the early research in packet switching, the government, industry, and academia have been partners in evolving and deploying this exciting new technology” (Brief 1).
Forty years ago there was no Internet and people used computers as typewriters or calculators. There were no computer networks or online databases. Like the television there is no single inventor of the Internet. The early Internet was developed by scientists who wanted to share their ideas. “People used computers as calculators, not to communicate. Scientists who needed to share their ideas began to explore ways to expand the computer's role. Those who owned expensive supercomputers also wanted to make it possible for more researchers to use their amazing machines” (How did the Internet 1). Government officials and scientists were interested in using the Internet to share information to protect the United States during the height of the Cold War (Peter 1). “For years, scientists and researchers used it to communicate and share data with one another. Today, we use the Internet for almost everything, and for many people it would be impossible to imagine life without it. Today, almost one-third of the world’s 6.8 billion population use the Internet regularly” (The Invention of the Internet1). The development of the World Wide Web has made the Internet accessible to the average person and made it an integral part of people's lives (Internet History 1). Information is no longer contained in the great libraries of the world it is available at the touch of a finger in peoples’ homes.
Conclusion
Neither of these mediums could have matured without scientists working to develop new technologies and creating innovations to improve them continually. In the 21st century television is facing the challenge of continuing to be meaningful in a world where people are trying to find information more quickly than ever before. The Internet is making television look at the way they report the news and the way that they produce television programs as Netflix programs like House of Cards gain universal acclaim and steal audiences from them. One hundred years ago America was still an agricultural country and the radio was considered a luxury. Even with the radio, telegraph, an...