Well Forgotten Old

Only sixty years ago when our grandparents were young media was mostly the tool for getting news. People did not have immediate connection with each other: they just walked, wrote letters, in emergency used telegraph, read books and magazines, listen to radio and vinyl records, collective intelligence was rare and had different forms. Is it all gone?

Letters

Letters appeared when people invented writing. Initially they were more like our stickers “Don’t forget something”. With development of writing letters become important source of getting news, most important (for example, from imperator to nation) were read out loud on main squares of cities. Invention of radio substituted such kind of letters, invention of phone and internet substituted other kind of letters. However, more than 1300 localities with 500-10000 people in Russia still don’t have mobile and Internet connections. They have to write letters or travel to exchange opinions with friends.

In the second half of the 20^th century sending letters with opinions or complains to magazines was very popular. Some people still do it, but the majority of letters have an informative, business nature. With popularization of the Internet people stop writing letters, and now they have more intimate character. To get a paper letter from your friend is something very unusual, surprising, and pleasant. I’ve got only two letters in my life, and the last one was several months ago.

Letters stop have its role in collective intelligence, sharing news with a public, but get new, more intimate and less media status.  

Telegraph

Although the first telegraph was invented in the second half of the 18^th century, it started to be widely used only by the end of the 19^th century. It works faster than delivery of letters, but wasn’t cheap. Thus, people used it much rarer than the phone now. If e-mail is development of paper letters, than from the users’ point of view I think that answering machine is kind of successor of telegraph. It also gets sound messages (for telegraph message people usually dictated the text to the worker who then sent it). Answering machines are not really widespread in Russia, but if old people want to leave a message (for people who live in a different city), they go to post office and use telegraph.

Books and Periodic

Reading is one of the most important parts of education and personal development. People evolve and books with them. Old massive books transform to smaller lightweight, and then in electronic books where you can have several books in one device. Magazines changed with books. Electronic versions of books and magazines win competition, but paper copies heatedly fight for a place on readers’ bookshelves. While children aren’t used to use electronics for reading, publishers print lots of children books. It is one of the most important targets for them. Magazines in Russia offer readers not only paper materials, but also some gifts. Magazines like “make your collection” use TV advertisement the most. For example, this magazine offers you to collect minerals, semiprecious stones.

Paper materials are not going to disappear.

Radio and recorders

Music also moves to the Internet, even radio. In previous century people bought records and device for playing it: gramophones, tape recorder, cassette player, CD player, MP3 player. Now they can buy it in the Internet and play on their computers. Moreover, property rights are quite invalid in Russia, so it is possible to freely download almost all you want.

In Vkontakte, Russian network, you can find even apps such as radio of Moscow Institution of Physics and Technology. Many people listen to radio in their cars, so it is still popular media instrument. I remember ten years ago radio was alarm clock for me: I woke up when translation started, near 7am. 

My grandmother, despite she has TV, still use it for getting news. To be honest, only in the kitchen when she cooks where she does not have TV.

Our grandparents are going to save old technologies and make them popular in next generations who’ve never seen them. I believe that, maybe, next fifty years clubs will appear which will use old technologies.