The Evolution of Communication

I’ve known Tim Bray for many years. He worked on SGML projects for us at Thomson in the early nineties before he co-invented XML and helped found OpenText.
His blog, Ongoing, is a nice mix of thought and family. His latest posting is a nice piece on sorting out human commmunication using the factors of immediacy, lifespan and audience. Read it here.
He starts by looking at our expanding options – half of which emerged in my own lifetime.
……………………Age in Years (2007 estimate)
Homo sapiens…~200,000
Language ………> 50,000
Writing ……………..5,000
Telephone ……………131
Broadcasting ………..101
E-Mail ………………….25
IRC ……………………..19
Texting ………………..15
IM ………………………11
Blogging ………………10
Twitter …………………..1
Libraries are all about communication, eh. And this is one of the issues of our age.
Stephen