Guide

Communications

Guide
Communications

A most valuable book for anyone concerned with the state of the chief means of communication in this country - television, films theatre, advertising, books and magazines.

"What do we mean by communication ? The oldest meaning of the world, in English, can be summarized as the passing of ideas, information, and attitudes from person to person. But, later communication came also to mean a line or channel from place to place. Since the Industrial Revolution there has been so much improvement in this kind of communication - in canals, railways, stemships, cars, aircraft - that often, when we say communications, we mean these ways of travelling and carrying. Yet there is another major line of modern improvement and invention. Steam printing, the electric telegraph, photography, wireless, film, television are new ways of passing ideas, information, and attitudes from person to person, and we call them, also, communications. So that now the world has different meanings in communication use, and there is often confusion between them. I think that for describing the physical means of traveling and carrying, our other word, transport, is better than communications, but i suppose both will go on being used. In many case, in this book, i mean by communication the institutions and forms in which ideas, information, and attitudes are transmitted and received. I mean by communications the process of transmission and reception. In our own generation, there has been a domestic tightening of interest in this world of communications. The development of powerful new means of communication has coincidered, historically, with the extension of democracy and with the attempts, by many kinds of ruling group, to control and manage democracy. The development has also coincidered with important changes in the nature of work and in education, which have given many people new kinds of social opportunity. There has been a great expansion in the scale of ordinary society, both through the new communications systems and through the growth of many kinds of large-scale organization. Acting together, these developments have created social problems whch seem to be of a quite new kind, The growth of interest in communications is an important response to this new situation. It came, really, as a breakthrough in experience, cutting across our usual categories. Already some of our basic ideas of socity are being changed by this new emphasis. From one familliar approach, through traditional politics, we have seen the central facts of society as power and government. From another familliar approach, through traditional economics, we have seen the central concern of society as property, production, and trade. These approaches remains important, but they are now joined by a new emphasis: that society is a form of communication trough which experience is described, shared, modified, and preserved. We are used to descriptions of our whole common life in political and economic terms. I actually received, agreeing and disagreeing. The original invitation stands. Revised Edition, with culture and society 1780-1950 and The Long Revolution, communications has been an influential factor, since it first came out as a Penguin Special, in opening up the new field of cultural studies. It is now re-issued as a Pelican in a revised edition, with more recent statistics and two new appendices. The author concludes with a full statement of the educational and social reforms needed to provide a ´permanent education´on democratic lines."

Communications, by Author Raymond Williams, published by Penguin Books. United Kingdoom.

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