How do we communicate? More important, WHAT do we communicate? What kind of vibrations do we send out?
Brian Wilson, producer, composer, and arranger for the classic Beach Boys, explained how he found the title for his most famous song, “Good Vibrations.” Walking to the market with his mother one day when he was a boy, he was startled when a neighbor’s dog started barking at him. Wilson’s mother said that the dog didn’t like his vibrations. That comment led him to think about different kinds of vibrations, eventually resulting in the creation of a number one hit.
We all send out vibrations. Not only in the way we feel, but in what we say and what we do. We communicate. We transmit waves.
19th century writer Nathaniel Hawthorne expressed this idea well when he discussed the potential of words. “Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”
Communication used to be limited. How far could your message get on a clay tablet? Benjamin Franklin expanded the possibilities of communication by inventing the Post Office. And then we got the telegraph and the telephone. But these were all limited mediums. Communication remained a transmission between two points. Radio opened communication between one person and many. But average people weren’t on the radio. Or on TV.
(Telephones increased the distance of communication, but not the breadth. You could only dial one number at the time.)
(Radio and TV allowed individuals to reach millions, but you had to be a celebrity individual. Social media and the internet give similar access to – potentially – everyone.)
Now we have the internet. Uncountable legions of “nobodies” suddenly have the power to communicate with millions. Vibrations whose reach once extended no farther than a handful of friends, relatives, and co-workers are finding their way into the vast public domain. This huge expansion in the possibilities of communication represents an equally huge responsibility. How are we using our power of one? A single person has never in history had this much potential influence.
It’s the power of a light switch. That usually unnoticed little mechanism has the power to illuminate a room. How many people can be built up, even inspired, by the magnified voices modern technology has made possible? Positive voices could previously only encourage one or two people at a time. In the Snapchat-Skype-Twitter-You Tube universe, the reach of those voices is practically limitless.
In Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling’s “The Little Black Bag” a doctor’s case filled with highly advanced medical tools from far in the future somehow lands in a mid-twentieth century American city. The story addresses the question of what people will do with such a collection of unimaginable wonders. A similar question might be pointed at us. Technological wonders have enlarged our voices beyond the dreams of any previous generation. It’s an extraordinary power. What are we doing with it?
The Skeptical Maltball 