𝙿𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚜 𝙰𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚟𝚎 Weekly Roundup

The Social Network of Tin-Cans and Telegrams

Pessimists Archive

Jan 27, 2021

`🥫〰🥫 The Social Network of Tin-Cans and Telegrams`

The young love to fraternize; in the 2000s it was Facebook, in the 1920s it was telegrams and in the 1880s it was… tin-can telephones. When older generations pick up on popular new communication mediums, they liken them to a strange new habit or worse, an addiction.

Source: Telegrams (1920s) TinCans (1880s) 🗞

The thing is… socializing, fraternizing, conversing is as natural and ‘addictive’ as breathing or sleeping: it is a core human need. Why is communication good and healthy, but telecommunication bad and addictive?

`📻 Radio Laggards`

A fun example from 1927 of laggards (those at the far end of the diffusion of innovation graph) finally giving in and embracing the radio after initial resistance to it:

“Those who “wouldn’t have one the things in the house” are now getting them in as soon as possible”

`💉 Not So Big Pharma`

Profiteering has long been used by anti-vaxxers as a way to demonize those manufacturing vaccines. In 2021 it is big Pharma; Pfizer, GSK etc. In 1888 it was individual doctors, who were accused of promoting the method so as to make more money by seeing more patients.

`🎂 Happy Birthday Mosaic`

The first commercial web browser turned 28 last week. Mosaic launched in 1993, a year later The Guardian ran a piece on the ‘net backlash.’ The critiques of today are not new and legit problems less unforeseen than assumed.

`🪦 Too Little Too Late`

1904 article on man who let his family take vaccine first to see what happened, he got small-pox and died. Technophobia kills.

`🪶 Tweet of the Week`

Pessimists Archive @PessimistsArc

A history of @nytimes on too much media consumption: 📱 2021: too much screen? 📺 1956: too much TV? 📻 1938: too much radio? 📖 1898: too much reading? (Via our substack pessimistsarchive.substack.com/p/too-much-too…)