A good exercise for reflecting on the importance of communication is to make a list of all the moments when it occurs during an entire day in a person’s life. This list can get incredibly long, from the first “good morning” to bedtime. Thus, communication is confused with life. And it has been that way since the beginning of humanity.
Communication refers to the act of sending, transmitting or receiving messages, whether through sounds, signs, gestures or oral and written language. So that there is a “sender” and a “receiver”. The sender produces and sends the message. The receiver receives this message and decodes it, that is, seeks to understand its content.
Whoever receives the message is not a passive being, who only absorbs information. Directly or indirectly, it has an influence on who conveys the message. To be understood, the sender needs to know the conditions under which his message will be received; otherwise, the information may not be understood. It would be impossible, for example, to try to communicate through sign language with a person who does not know this technique.
The message is formed by an organized structure of signals that “travel” from the sender to the receiver. This path is followed with the help of a medium, which can be speech, writing printed on paper, an image, a radio broadcast.
Communication does not exist apart from social life. There is no communication without society and vice versa. One needs the other to exist. Without communication, it would be impossible to live in society, because nobody would understand each other.
Thousands of years ago, societies began to draw the first symbols (or signs) that guide communication. An example is the pictograms of the Sumerian people, who created drawings to represent objects or ideas. Another example is our own alphabet, formed by drawings that correspond to sounds. These signs began to be registered on clay or wooden tablets and, later, on paper.
According to Recipesinthebox, societies have always looked for ways to bridge the gap, taking messages further. Sound signals (such as drums) and visual signals (such as smoke) have already been used. Writing proved to be very efficient for carrying messages over a long distance. A written text can “travel” by boat, car, plane or on the back of an animal.
The modern world has invented sophisticated communication supports: telegraph , telephone , radio , TV, satellites, internet. Some of these reach millions of people at the same time, as is the case with TV.
In the face of such rapid changes that affect people’s lives so much, it is worth asking: What does communication mean today? What are telecommunications? What technologies do they support? What is the degree of development of Brazil in this field?
To assess issues like these, it is necessary to understand a little more about structured means of communication. It is also necessary to check how communication is organized in Brazil.
The telecommunications revolution, which started in Brazil in the 1970s, was one of the milestones in the process of organizing the national territory (…) From the telegraph to the telephone and the telex, from the fax and the computer to the satellite, to optical fiber and the internet, the development of telecommunications participated vigorously in the game between the physical or material separation of activities and the commands of those activities. (…) In the territory, each substitution was made when society started to demand a technical change. There has been, since ancient times, the dream and the need for remote communication between men. Today, two people separated by thousands of kilometers can exchange information almost instantly. Gone are the times when a phone call took hours to complete and depended on the patience of users and telephone operators.
The change is not just the number of messages or the speed at which they are transmitted. There was also a qualitative change. So-called mass media have emerged, which transmit impressive volumes of information. The influence of these media on people is enormous. A day without watching TV for many people is enough to realize how important it is.
One effect of these means is that they can replace personal contacts, causing people to start communicating less and less with each other. They are stuck with a way of life that makes them more isolated.
Some experts say that certain media do not fully perform the act of communicating. This is the case with TV, a great source of information, but which makes viewers very passive. TV is a one-to-many communication. The telephone is different: even the distance allows a more direct contact, as it is a one-to-one communication. The internet, on the other hand, allows, according to this line of thought, the communication of many with many.
Other scholars do not think that there is, strictly speaking, this distinction between communication and information. For them, those who watch TV are not passive subjects. The viewer cannot speak directly to the broadcaster (the TV), but reacts by interfering with the broadcasters’ programming. Telenovelas would be an example, as audience surveys ultimately determine the outcome of the plot and the fate of the audience’s favorite characters.
It is also worth noting that the flood of information conveyed by the media is not disinterested. Such media transmit values, codes of behavior and lifestyles. They influence the consumption and behavior of social groups. It is not by chance that there is today, in Brazil, a strong movement that advocates greater social control of TV programming.
