Nation at Your Fingertips, The
Nation at Your Fingertips, The is a short film from 1951 released on 16mm. It is held in the Prelinger Archives collection.
Visible lines of transportation -- rivers, roads and rails -- traverse the landscape and enable the movement of people, freight and information in its physical form. In the mid-nineteenth century the invention of the telegraph split off the movement of information from the transportation of tangible things, and for the first time information moved reliably and almost instantaneously. Telegraph lines followed the railroads and became the means by which movements of freight and people was supervised and coordinated. In the latter part of the century, telephones were installed, first in cities, later in towns, and finally between centers of population. By 1915 the first coast-to-coast telephone call was placed, and in fifteen more years it was possible to phone across the Atlantic by radio. Radio itself became a practical medium of communication in the 'teens and by the end of the twenties was edging out print as a vehicle for mass entertainment and information. Everything transported by wires and waves was invisible and intangible; their paths hardly resembled dramatic landscape alterations like railroads and highways.
But even as communications technology slowly began to inscribe an invisible communications infrastructure across the country, the technology continued to demand the presence of many attendants and was generally available only by appointment and at considerable cost, affordable only to a relatively small portion of the population. With the introduction of consumer long distance dialing on an experimental basis in 1951, it suddenly became possible for telephone customers to operate this complex communications system without the assistance or intervention of others. The reduction in labor cost later made possible dramatic reductions in the cost of toll calls. Although the shift away from a landscape defined predominantly by physical distance between people and resources had been occurring for some time, the availability of direct distance dialing, as shown in The Nation at Your Fingertips, opened up "virtual space" for masses of consumers. For the first time ever, ordinary individuals could conduct business, maintain contacts, and pursue relations with others at a great distance, assisted by automated equipment. A new electronic landscape opened for the use of the many rather than the few. Though this electronic landscape superimposed itself upon the tangible landscape, its convenience and the needs that it could fulfill tended to render the tangible landscape much less relevant. "Go ahead, call her. You'll feel better," says John to his worried wife, anxious about a sick grandchild.
When we speak today of "cyberspace" and "virtual culture" we are talking about a virtual landscape, based on the availability of automated instantaneous electronic contact, a landscape whose roots extend back to direct distance dialing. And when we assess the extravagant claims that are being made for "revolutionary" new technologies and how these technologies will change the way we live and work, we might well examine them in the light of the true history of the telephone, which has indeed helped to bring about great changes.| Nation at Your Fingertips, The | |
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| Produced by | Audio Productions, Inc. |
Production companies | Audio Productions, Inc. |
| Distributed by | Audio Productions, Inc. |
Release date | 1951 |
Running time | 10:19 |
| Language | English |
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