Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

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Communication in the Space Age by Maj. Gen. J. B. Medaris, U.S. Army (Ret.) X HIS is about the phenomenon of Communication —the transfer of information— in this our Age of Space. I am not going to talk about an interplanetary telephone exchange or suggest a revamping of the nation's defense programs. These are subjects in which I have a continuing interest, but I want to talk about something more fundamental. I want to discuss the necessity for general improvement in the arts and sciences of communication, particularly in the educational field. Any attempt to define and describe and delineate the field of Communication is an ambitious undertaking, to say the least. It is difficult even to pinpoint the historical beginnings of modem communications. But let us accept "the transfer of information" as a definition of communication and pay our respects to a gentleman who may have been the first to apply technology to communication. He lived in Germany in the infancy of the Renaissance and his name, of course, was Johann Gutenberg. If you discount the tom-tom, the smoke signal and the semaphore, Gutenberg's printing press was man's first modern tool for communication. But not until the 19th century, when Samuel F. B. Morse invented the telegraph, did the world enjoy another major advance in communications. Morse's invention was followed by the work of Edison and Bell and Marconi. These are indeed the patron saints of our profession. But apart from the technological significance of their work, these men shared certain problems and convictions and attitudes that relate directly to you and to me. First of all, each of them was possessed with an overpowering conviction that the world needed what he could give it. And each of them was ridiculed for his conviction. Many humanist writers refused to have their works printed on Gutenberg's "evil machine." The telegraph went begging for several years while Congress argued over funds for Morse's Thus is the address, printed in full, which was presented by Gen. Medaris at the midwinter meeting of the National Audiovisual Association. Gen. Medaris is chairman of the board. Electronics Teaching Laboratories, and president. The Lionel Corporation. ambitious device. Alexander Graham Bell's telephont was described by the London Times' as the lates' crack-pot scheme from America, a gadget grossly in fericr to the old reliable speaking tube. Bell found it necessary to organize a touring vaudeville show fea turing the telephone and a cornet player in order tr popularize his invention. Edison's trials began wher his mother first enrolled him in school. The teachei pronounced him "addled" and Edison ran away frorr school and never returned. Many years later, thousands of people came by train to his laboratory in New Jersey to see the electric light, the phonograph and the motion picture projector. Hundreds went away shaking their heads in disbelief, saying, "There's some kind of sneaky trick to it." Now, no man can pursue a dream in the face of such opposition unless he has the conviction that success is inevitable, contingent only upon his belief in what he is doing. I once knew a philosojiher who in his declining years achieved an enviable attitude of peace and tranquility. On his 100th birthday a newspaper reporter asked him how he had managed to live so long in apparent bliss. "I have finally learned," the old man said, "to cooperate with the inevitable." With the exception of Edison, these pioneers were lone wolves, a fact which makes their determination all the more admirable. No one had then orgainzed the activities of many technicians into orderly, applied research, and these men tinkered in backyard workshops without benefit of modern research methods. The world was simply not that interested in the progress of technology. Today, of course, we are not hampered by public antipathy toward technology. If anything, the general public is probably too anxious to embrace anything that is new, e s p e c i a 11 y if it relates to communications technology. A lack of immediate discrimination by the public in some areas is not alarming. Every technological innovation is subjected to the unbiased test of time, and eventually the phony ones fall by the wayside. But there are certain applications of technology that properly fall within the domain of national interests, and in those areas we cannot afford a lengthy, trial-by-error experiment. Let me tell you what I mean. Upon his arrival in Dallas for the NAVA Mid-winter Conference, General Medaris, left, was presented with a traditional Texas hat and was greeted hy conference chairman Eloise Keefe, NAVA president Harvey Marks, and transportation coniniittee chairman Tom Reed. 332 Educatioinal Screen and Audiovisual Guide — July, 1961.