COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION

(PRELIM TOPICS)
HISTORY
The history of communication technologies (media and appropriate inscription tools) have
evolved in tandem with shifts in political and economic systems, and by extension, systems of
power. Communication can range from very subtle processes of exchange to full conversations and
mass communication. The history of communication itself can be traced back since the origin of
speech circa 100,000 BCE.[1] The use of technology in communication may be considered since the
first use of symbols about 30,000 years BCE. Among the symbols used, there are cave
paintings, petroglyphs, pictograms and ideograms. Writing was a major innovation, as well
as printing technology and, more recently, telecommunications and the Internet.
Often Human communication was initiated with the origin of speech approximately 100,000 BCE.
[1]
Symbols were developed about 30,000 years ago. The imperfection of speech allowed easier
dissemination of ideas and eventually resulted in the creation of new forms of communication, improving
both the range at which people could communicate and the longevity of the information. All of those
inventions were based on the key concept of the symbol.

The oldest known symbols created for communication were cave paintings, a form of rock art, dating
to the Upper Paleolithic age. The oldest known cave painting is located within Chauvet Cave, dated to
around 30,000 BCE.[2] These paintings contained increasing amounts of information: people may have
created the first calendar as far back as 15,000 years ago.[3] The connection between drawing and writing is
further shown by linguistics: in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece the concepts and words of drawing and
writing were the same (Egyptian: 's-sh', Greek: 'graphein').

The next advancement in the history of communications came with the production of petroglyphs, carvings
into a rock surface. It took about 20,000 years for Homo sapiens to move from the first cave paintings to
the first petroglyphs, dated to approximately the Neolithic and late Upper Paleolithic boundary, about
10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

It is possible that Homo sapiens (humans) of that time used some other forms of communication, often
for mnemonic purposes - specially arranged stones, symbols carved in wood or earth, quipu-like
rocks, tattoos, but little other than the most durable carved stones has survived to modern times and we
can only speculate about their existence based on our observation of still existing 'hunter-gatherer'
cultures such as those of Africa or Oceania.

A pictogram (pictograph) is a symbol representing a concept, object, activity, place or event

by illustration. Pictography is a form of proto-writing whereby ideas are transmitted through drawing.
Pictographs were the next step in the evolution of communication: the most important difference between
petroglyphs and pictograms is that petroglyphs are simply showing an event, but pictograms are telling a
story about the event, thus they can for example be ordered chronologically.

Pictograms were used by various ancient cultures all over the world since around 9000 BCE, when tokens
marked with simple pictures began to be used to label basic farm produce and become increasingly
popular around 6000–5000 BCE.

They were the basis of cuneiform[6] and hieroglyphs and began to develop into logographic writing
systems around 5000 BCE.

The oldest-known forms of writing were primarily logographic in nature, based

on pictographic and ideographic elements. Most writing systems can be broadly divided into three
categories: logographic, syllabic and alphabetic (or segmental); however, all three may be found in any
given writing system in varying proportions, often making it difficult to categorize a system uniquely.

The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in
the late Neolithic of the late 5th millennium BCE. The first writing system is generally believed to have been
invented in prehistoric Sumer and developed by the late 4th millennium BCE into cuneiform. Egyptian
hieroglyphs, and the undeciphered Proto-Elamite writing system and Indus Valley script, also date to this
era, though a few scholars have questioned the Indus Valley script's status as a writing system.

History of telecommunication
The history of telecommunication - the transmission of signals over a distance for communication - began
thousands of years ago with the use of smoke signals and drums in Africa, America and parts of Asia. In the
1790s the first fixed semaphore systems emerged in Europe however it was not until the 1830s
that electrical telecommunication systems started to appear.

Pre-electric

 26–37 CE – Roman Emperor Tiberius rules the empire from the island of Capri by signaling messages
with metal mirrors to reflect the sun.
 1520 – Ships on Ferdinand Magellan's voyage signal to each other by firing cannon and raising flags.
 1792 – Claude Chappe invents the semaphore telegraph.
Telegraph

 1792 – Claude Chappe establishes the first long-distance semaphore telegraph line.
 1831 – Joseph Henry proposes and builds an electric telegraph.
 1836 – Samuel Morse develops the Morse code.
 1843 – Samuel Morse builds the first long-distance electric telegraph line.
Landline telephone

 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson exhibit an electric telephone in Boston.
 1889 – Almon Strowger patents the direct dial
Phonograph

 1877 – Thomas Edison patents the phonograph.

 1977 – William K. Heine invents the laser turntable.[13]
 1997 – ELP offers the first commercial laser turntable for sale, the LT-1XA.[14]
Radio and television

 1920 – Radio station KDKA based in Pittsburgh began the first broadcast.
 1925 – John Logie Baird transmits the first television signal.
 1942 – Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil invent frequency hopping spread spectrum communication
technique.
 1947 – Full-scale commercial television is first broadcast.
 1963 – First geosynchronous communications satellite is launched, 17.5 years after Arthur C. Clarke's
article.
 1999 – Sirius satellite radio is introduced.
Fax

 1843 – Patent issued for the "Electric Printing Telegraph", a very early forerunner of the fax machine
 1926 – Commercial availability of the radioax
 1964 – First modern fax machine commercially available (Long Distance Xerography)
 1996 – First internet fax machine.
Mobile telephone

 1947 – Douglas H. Ring and W. Rae Young of Bell Labs propose a cell-based approach which led to
"cellular phones."
 1957 – Leonid Kupriyanovich invents the LK-1 mobile radio telephone, the first to use code-division
multiple access.
 1965 – Chandros Rypinski, Jr. patents the first multiple channel radio telephone system [15] which was
licensed to Bell Labs[16] (patent no. US3173996A).
 1981 – Comvik introduces the world's first automatic mobile phone service followed a week later
by Nordic Mobile Telephone
 1991 – GSM is put into operation
 1992 – Neil Papworth sends the first SMS (or text message), on the Vodafone network.[17][18][19][20]
 2014 – The number of mobile connections surpasses the global population.[21]
Computers and Internet

 1946 – The University of Pennsylvania introduces ENIAC, the first programmable, electronic, general-
purpose digital computer
 1949 – Claude Shannon, the "father of information theory", mathematically proves the Nyquist–
Shannon sampling theorem.
 1957 – Gordon Gould invents the laser and the optical amplifier.[22]
 1965 – First email sent (at MIT).[23]Exhibition space at Rupriikki Media Museum in Tampere, Finland
 1966 – Charles Kao realizes that silica-based optical waveguides offer a practical way to transmit light
via total internal reflection.
 1969 – The first hosts of ARPANET, Internet's ancestor, are connected.[24]

ARPANET access points in the 1970s

 1971 – Erna Schneider Hoover invents a computerized switching system for telephone traffic.
 1971 – 8-inch floppy disk removable storage medium for computers is introduced.[25]
 1973 – Optelecom, Inc. delivers the first operational optical communications system under an ARPA
contract to the US Army Missile Command, and the first commercial fiber optic system to Chevron. [26]
 1975 – "First list servers are introduced."[25]
 1976 – The personal computer (PC) market is born.
 1977 – Donald Knuth begins work on TeX.
 1980 – Usenet is established.
 1981 – Hayes Smartmodem introduced.[27]
 1983 – Microsoft Word software is launched.[28]
 1985 – AOL is launched.
 1988 – Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is released.
 1989 – Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau build the prototype system which became the World Wide
Web at CERN.
 1989 – WordPerfect 5.1 word processing software released.[27]
 1989 – Lotus Notes software is launched.[29]
 1990 – Adobe Photoshop is released.
 1991 – Anders Olsson transmits solitary waves through an optical fiber with a data rate of 32 billion
bits per second.
 1992 – Internet2 organization is created.
 1992 – IBM ThinkPad 700C laptop computer created. It was lightweight compared to its predecessors.
[27]

 Screenshot of NCSA Mosaic browser1993 – Mosaic graphical web browser is launched.[29]

 1994 – Internet radio broadcasting is born.
 1996 – The first Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM) system was installed by Ciena Corp. [30] WDM
subsequently became the common basis of all telecommunications networks[31] and a foundation of
the Internet.
 1996 – Motorola StarTAC mobile phone introduced. It was significantly smaller than previous
cellphones.[27]
 1997 – SixDegrees.com is launched, the first of several early social networking services
 1999 – Napster peer-to-peer file sharing is launched.[27]
 1999 – XMPP is released.
 2001 – Cyworld adds social networking features and becomes the first of several mass-market social
networking service
 2003 – Skype video calling software is launched.
 2004 – Facebook is launched, becoming the largest social networking site in 2009.
 2005 – YouTube, the video-sharing site, is launched.
 2005 – Reddit is launched.
 2006 – Twitter is launched.
 2007 – iPhone is launched.
 2009 – WhatsApp is launched.
 2010 – Instagram is launched.
 2011 – Snapchat is launched.
 2015 – Discord is launched.

without noticing, people use communication technology every day. As technology advances,
professionals develop innovative ways of making communication more efficient and convenient. If
you frequently communicate with others in your personal or professional life, you can benefit from
learning more about communication technologies. In this article, we explain what communication
technology is, provide modern communication technology examples, outline some careers in the
field, and share communication skills.
THEORIES OF COMMUNICATION:
1. MAGIC BULLET/ HYPODERMIC NEEDLE/ STIMULUS RESPONSE THEORY
Before the first World War, there was no separate field of study on Communication, but knowledge
about mass communication was accumulating. An outcome of World War I propaganda efforts,
the Magic Bullet or Hypodermic Needle Theory came into existence. It propounded the view that the
mass media had a powerful influence on the mass audience and could deliberately alter or control
peoples' behaviour.
Klapper (1960) formulated several generalizations on the effects of mass media. His research findings
are as follows: "Mass-media ordinarily does not serve as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience
effect, but rather functions through a nexus of mediating factors and influences. These mediating
factors render mass-communication as a contributory agent in a process of reinforcing the existing
conditions."
The main mediating factors which he considers responsible for the functions and effects of mass
communications are
- selective exposure i.e., people's tendency to expose themselves to those mass communications which
are in agreement with their attitudes and interests; and
- selective perception and retention i.e., people's inclination to organize the meaning of mass
communication messages into accord with their already existing views.
2. TWO STEP FLOW THEORY
In the early 40"s, before the invention of television, Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Goudet conducted an
American survey on mass campaigns. The study revealed that informal social relationships had played a
part in modifying the manner in which individuals selected content from the media campaign. The study
also indicated that ideas often flowed from the radio and newspapers to opinion leaders and from them
to the less active sections of society. Thus, informal social groups have some degree of influence on
people and mould the way they select media content and act on it.
3. ONE STEP FLOW THEORY
This theory simply stated that mass communication media channels
communicate directly to the mass audience without the message
being filtered by opinion leaders.

4. MULTI STEP FLOW THEORY

This was based on the idea that there are a number of relays in the communication flow from a source
to a large audience.
5. USES AND GRATIFICATION THEORY
This theory propounded by Katz in 1970, is concerned with how people use media for gratification of
their needs. An outcome of Abraham Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, it propounds the fact that people
choose what they want to see or read and the different media compete to satisfy each individual"s
needs.
In the hierarchy of needs, there are five levels in the form of a pyramid with the basic needs such as
food and clothing at the base and the higher order needs climbing up the pyramid. The fulfillment of
each lower level need leads to the individual looking to satisfy the next level of need and so on till he
reaches the superior-most need of self-actualization.
The Uses and Gratifications approach reminds us that people use media for many purposes. As media
users become increasingly confronted with choices, this approach should direct our attention to the
audience. Lull's television research found that families used television for communication facilitation,
relationship building, intimacy, and for structuring the day. In general researchers have found four kinds
of gratifications:
1. Information - we want to find out about society and the world- we want to satisfy our curiosity. This
would fit the news and documentaries which both give us a sense that we are learning about the world.
2. Personal Identity - we may watch the television in order to look for models for our behaviour. So, for
example, we may identify with characters that we see in a soap. The characters help us to decide what
feel about ourselves and if we agree with their actions and they succeed we feel better about ourselves.
3. Integration and Social Interaction - we use the media in order to find out more about the
circumstances of other people. Watching a show helps us to empathize and sympathize with the lives of
others so that we may even end up thinking of the characters in programme as friends.
4. Entertainment - sometimes we simply use the media for enjoyment, relaxation or just to fill time.
Riley and Riley (1951) found that children in peer groups used adventure stories from the media for
group games while individual children used media stories for fantasizing and daydreaming. The study
thus found that different people use the same messages from the media for different purposes.
Katz replaced the question "what do media do to people?" with the question "what do people do with
the media?" Katz, Gurevitch & Hass found that the media are used by
individuals to meet the following specific needs :
-Cognitive needs (acquiring information, knowledge and understanding)
-Affective needs (emotional, pleasurable experience)
-Personal integrative needs (strengthening self image)
-Social integrative needs (strengthening self image)
-Tension release needs (escape and diversion)
5. SPIRAL OF SILENCE THEORY
Propounded by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, this theory states that the media publicizes opinions that
are mainstream and people adjust their opinions according to their perceptions to avoid being
isolated. Individuals who perceive their own opinion as being accepted will express it, whilst those who
think themselves as being a minority, suppress their views. Innovators and change agents are unafraid
to voice different opinions, as they do not fear isolation

6. CONSISTENCY THEORIES (1950s)

Festinger formulated the consistency theories that talked about people"s need for consistency in their
beliefs and judgements. In order to reduce dissonance created by inconsistencies in belief, judgments
and action people expose themselves to information that is consistent with their ideas and actions, and
they shut out other communications.

7. McCOMBS AND SHAW"S AGENDA SETTING THEORY

This theory puts forth the ability of the media to influence the significance of events in the public's
mind. The media set the agenda for the audience's discussion and mentally order and organize their
world. The theory is consistent with a "use and gratification" approach. McCombs and Shaw assert that
the agenda-setting function of the media causes the correlation between the media and public ordering
of priorities. The people most affected by the media agenda are those who have a high need for
orientation
8. Media Dependency Theory

Developed by Ball-Rokeach and DeFluer, the key idea behind this theory is that audiences depend on
media information to meet needs and reach goals, and social institutions and media systems interact
with audiences to create needs, interests, and motives in the person. The degree of dependence is
influenced by the number and centrality of information functions and social stability. Some questions
that this theory raised were:
Do media create needs?
Do people turn to media to achieve gratification and satisfy needs?
Are media needs personal, social, cultural, political, or all of these?
"The media are our friends"??

9. STEPHENSON"S PLAY THEORY

Play is an activity pursued for pleasure. The daily withdrawal of people into the mass media in their
after hours is a matter of subjectivity. The effect of mass communication is not escapism nor seducing
the masses. Rather it is seen as anti-anxiety producing, and are regarded as communication-pleasure.

10. MODELING BEHAVIOUR THEORY

Behaviors which are modeled from media experiences can become habitual if found useful and/or if
they are reinforced in the environment. This is not about violent or criminal behavior.

11. STALAGMITE THEORIES

These theories suggest that mediated experiences induce long term effects that are very difficult to
measure. The effects are like stalagmite drippings building up over time. Meaning Theory and the
Cultivation Theory are two of the most significant Stalagmite theories.
MEANING THEORY
Media experiences mould meanings by putting things in a particular framework. Does "NYPD Blue"
depict the real world of New York City police detectives? Questions like this are coming from a Meaning
Theory focus on media.
CULTIVATION-THEORY
George Gerbner tried to determine the influence of television on viewers" ideas of the environment
they lived in. He found that dominance of TV created a common view of the world and that it
 homogenized different cultures. TV portrayed the society as a bad place to live in leading to people
becoming distrustful of the world. Over time, particular symbols, images, messages, meanings become
dominant and are absorbed as the truth. Cultural stereotypes, ways of assessing value and hierarchies
are established.
12. Diffusion of innovations theory

Pioneered in 1943 by Bryce Ryan and Neil Gross of Iowa State University this theory traces the process
by which a new idea or practice is communicated through certain channels over time among members
of a social system. The model describes the factors that influence people's thoughts and actions and the
process of adopting a new technology or idea.
13. Social learning theory

Formulated by Albert Bandura at Stanford University, this specifies that mass-media messages give
audience members an opportunity to identify with attractive characters that demonstrate behavior,
engage emotions, and allow mental rehearsal and modeling of new behavior. The behavior of models in
the mass media also offers vicarious reinforcement to motivate audience members' adoption of the
behavior.

COMMUNICATION PROCESS:
1. The sender develops an idea to be sent

The beginning of the communication process involves the sender creating an idea that they plan to send to
another person or group of people. Essentially, they're planning the overall subject matter or information
they want to transmit.

2. The sender encodes the message

Once the sender develops an idea, they translate it into a form that can be transmitted to someone else.
This means they transform the thoughts of the information they want to send into a certain format. For
example, if you are writing a letter, you'll translate your idea into words. The message can also be
nonverbal, oral or symbolic.

3. The sender selects the channel of communication that will be used

Next, the sender decides how the message will be sent. This involves selecting the most suitable medium
for the message they're relaying. Some communication mediums include speaking, writing, electronic
transmission or nonverbal communication. If you're communicating at work, make sure to select the
proper and most professional channel of communication.

4. The message travels over the channel of communication

After the medium is chosen, the message then begins the process of transmission. The exact process of this
will depend on the selected medium. In order for the message to be properly sent, the sender should have
selected the appropriate medium.
5. The message is received by the receiver

Next, the message is received by the recipient. This step in the communication process is done by hearing
the message, seeing it, feeling it or another form of reception.

6. The receiver decodes the message

The receiver then decodes the sender's message. In other words, they interpret it and convert it into a
thought. After they've done this, they analyze the message and attempt to understand it. The
communication process is performed effectively when the sender and receiver have the same meaning for
the transmitted message.

7. The receiver provides feedback, if applicable

Lastly, unless it's a one-way communication, the receiver will provide feedback in the form of a reply to the
original sender of the message. Feedback provides the recipient with the ability to ensure the sender that
their message was properly received and interpreted. Between two people, this is two-way
communication.

Cultural competence is regarded as a tool for promoting intercultural communication and interpersonal
communication. This paper sets out to discuss the significance of cultural competence in interpersonal and
intercultural communication. In doing the discussion, the essay is divided into three sections. The first
section provides an introduction with an attempt to provide scholarly definitions of the key terms; the
second section discusses five significance of cultural competence in interpersonal and intercultural
communication. The final section provides a viable conclusion. The thesis of this paper is that cultural
competence is an essential element in enhancing interpersonal and intercultural communication.

Keywords; cultural, competence, interpersonal, intercultural and communication

The word communication is derived from the Latin word, communis, which means common. This definition
underscores the fact that unless a common understanding results from the exchange of information, there
is no communication. Scholars have defined ‘communication’ differently. Communication is said to be "the
creation and exchange of meaning (Nordquist, 2019). It can be defined as the process of transmitting
information and common understanding from one person to another (Keyton, 2011). Communication is
considered effective if it receives the desired result, response or reaction. All communications are related
to some context. In any context, a communication loop exists to enable successful communication. Ideally,
communication between people from the same or different orientation is dependent on cultural
competence.

Culture can be refer to as “the ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships, and
worldview and shared by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors (which can include
a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and religion)”. Samovar & Porter (1997)
point out that as cultures differ from one another, the communication practices and behaviours of people
will inevitably vary as a result of their different perceptions of the world. Therefore, to accept yourself as a
cultural being means embracing a cultural identity composed of ethnicity, culture, gender, age, life stage,
beliefs, values, and assumptions.

Competence can also be defined as “system of knowledge, abilities, skills and aptitudes, well-structured
and thoroughly mastered, that enable the student to identify and effectively solve problems in a specific
field of human activity” (Stephen, 2006). Competence is the way that human being acquires certain skills,
abilities, or aptitudes to deal with certain situations. It is an individual characteristic that is inextricably
linked to performance efficiency. Competence “is the result of a dynamic process specific to a situation and
can be adapted to other situations” (Afanas, 2013). Communication competence can therefore be defined
as, “the ability to make oneself understood, without hesitation and inhibitions, by linguistic means which
the individual comprehends. It has learned to assess in terms of their effects, and the ability to
comprehend communicative intentions even when they are expressed in a code which the speaker him or
herself does not yet know well enough to use and is only partially available in his or her own idiolect”
(Apud Berns, 1990:97). Thus, the phrase “communication competence” viewed through the theoretical
delineations drawn by Hymes Bachman and Celce-Murcia was further developed by including among its
elements the “intercultural competence”. The Usó-Juan –Martinez-Flor views the intercultural competence
and the linguistic, strategic and pragmatic competences as equal, directly related to the discursive
component and as an integral part of the interpersonal communication competence. According to this
model, the intercultural competence is about “how to interpret and produce a spoken or written piece of
discourse within a particular sociocultural context” (Usó-Juan, Alicia Martinez-Flor, 2008:161).

Communication is often influenced by cultural behaviour. More often than not, people are not fully aware
of the assumptions and beliefs associated with communication exchange. “Intercultural communication is
the sending and receiving of messages across languages and cultures. It is also a negotiated understanding
of meaning in human experience across social systems and societies” (Arent, 2009). Intercultural
communication, more precisely then, is defined as the study of communication between people whose
“cultural perceptions and symbol systems are distinct enough” to alter their communication (Samovar and
Porter, 1997). In their model of intercultural communication, Samovar and Porter (1997) illustrate the
process of how the meaning of a message changes when it is encoded by a person in one culture and
decoded by a person in another culture in the context of his or her own cultural background. In some
cases, the message may be interpreted to carry a different meaning than was intended. Therefore, when
communicating with someone from a different culture, we can therefore expect cultural differences to
have an influence. Cultural differences stem from our differing perceptions, which in turn determines how
we communicate with people of other cultures. By understanding how people perceive the world, their
values and beliefs, we can better understand what they say and can anticipate potential cross-cultural
misunderstandings.

On the other hand, “interpersonal communication is the process by which people exchange information,
feelings, and meaning through verbal and non-verbal messages: it is face-to-face communication”
(Ostańkowicz- Bazan, 2015). Interpersonal communication is not just about what is actually said - the
language used-buthowit is said and the non-verbal messages sent through tone of voice, facial expressions,
gestures and body language. For this reason intercultural competence is very important to ensure effective
and efficient communication.

“Intercultural competence is a communication behavior that is appropriate and effective in a given context
…” Thus the ability one has to recognize his or her cultural norms, to understand the patient’s special
perspective and to effectively adjust and adapt behaviours to maximize care (Hamdan-Mansour, 2016).
People of good cultural competence are indicated during communication based on their self-awareness,
attitude and their listening and speaking skills and above all empathy. Hence, they are able to
communicate with people in a way that earns their respect and trust. Cultural competence is comprised of
four components; awareness of one's own cultural worldview, knowledge of different cultural practices
and worldviews, attitude towards cultural differences and cross-cultural skills Therefore, such persons are
very much aware of their own culture, personal attitude and communication styles making them conscious
of every physical and human settings to ensure effective communication. Cultural competence is very
significant in interpersonal and intercultural communication for many reasons.

What is communication technology?

Communication technology is any tool people use to create, transmit, store, and share information.
Throughout history, people have used various methods for sending messages over long distances. For
example, before the advancement of technology, humans used drums and smoke signals to communicate.
As technology advanced, people began using telegraphs, telephones, and wireless radios to send
messages. In the modern era, professionals have invented new technologies to make communication
convenient and efficient. As a result, people use various communication technologies every day, such as
laptops, smartphones, and even household items like thermostats and refrigerators.

Communication technology examples

Here are eight communication technology examples that you can use to enhance your daily life and make
communicating easy:

1. Blogs

Blogs are personal websites that you might use to share content with anyone interested in the subject
from anywhere in the world. You can use blogs for leisure or business purposes. For example, individuals
who enjoy writing fan-fiction about their favourite animated series may begin a blog to share their writing.
Conversely, a professional blogger with a large following may generate money through affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing may consist of advertisements within the blog. Alternatively, the blogger may
recommend a product or service to their readers.

Businesses also use blogs for publicity and to attract new clients. For example, an online company that
markets books may start a blog highlighting its marketing expertise. When writers read the posts, they may
trust the company and use its services to market their book. Some careers may require an understanding
of blogs, such as professional bloggers, writers, editors, manufacturers, coaches, and digital marketers.

2. Conferencing Technology

Conferencing technology allows multiple people to communicate in real time from different locations.
Often, conferencing technology includes audio and video features, making interactions using this
technology feel more personal than communicating via a phone call. You might use conferencing
technology to communicate with friends and family. Companies can also use conferencing technology to
conduct business with clients working in distant locations. For example, a marketing company in one
country working with a client in another is likely to use conferencing technology to conduct business.

3. Email

People have been using email since the early 1970s, and it remains a widely popular method of
communication today. Emails are messages that a single computer user distributes electronically to one or
more recipients over a network. Sending and receiving emails requires access to the internet. You can use
email for personal use, such as sending messages to friends and family members. Often, job candidates
send their resumes to potential employers via email.

Typically, companies provide their employees with business email addresses, allowing them to
communicate with colleagues and clients. For example, teachers may use their school email addresses to
contact their students' parents with progress updates. Businesses can acquire email lists to help grow their
brand and increase sales.
4. Podcasts

A podcast is a digital audio file that you can share with listeners via the internet. Listeners can download or
stream your podcasts at their convenience using laptops or smartphones. In popular podcast series with
specific themes, a host typically introduces particular subjects. Listeners can subscribe to podcasts that
they enjoy. The podcast can then automatically notify them when a new episode becomes available.
Career paths in podcasting can include podcast producers, search engine optimization (SEO) specialists,
audio editors, content writers, and web developers.

5. Radio

Radio systems transmit and receive electromagnetic waves, typically carrying speech, data, or video. The
most widespread use of radio is broadcasting, using a single transmitter to share conversation and music.
For example, you may listen to AM or FM radio in your vehicle. As you're listening, the vehicle's radio
system receives radio frequencies from a single radio transmitter within the range of these frequencies.
Careers that require a thorough understanding of radio waves might include meteorologists, physical
oceanographers, seismologists, electronics engineers, and sonography technicians.

6. Smart speakers

Smart speakers are internet-enabled speakers that you can control using only your voice. The purpose of
smart speakers is to make users' lives easier. They achieve this by completing routine tasks using simple
voice commands instead of multiple physical actions. You can use smart speakers to stream audio, share
information, and communicate with other devices, such as thermostats and lights. For example, if you set
up your smart speaker to control the lighting in your home, you can turn off a light by saying, "Turn off the
kitchen light."

7. Social media platforms

In recent years, social media has become a leading communication tool. You can use various social media
platforms to create a personal profile and share your daily activities. The content may include posts
containing photos, videos, and writings. Most social media platforms allow users to dictate who can view
and interact with their content.

While many people use social media for personal use, it's important for businesses to create a strong social
media presence. For example, a clothing company may advertise its products using an official social media
profile. In addition, companies may send individuals with a large social media following free products,
hoping to reach a broader audience and increase sales.

8. Wearable technology

Wearable technology, or wearables, are electronic devices you can wear as accessories or incorporate into
your clothing. You might use wearable technologies for various purposes, such as fitness tracking, playing
video games, and even enhancing your hearing. Microprocessors power these hands-free gadgets.
Wearables often require internet access to send and receive data. Some examples of wearable
technologies include:

 Smartwatches
 Smart eyewear
 Workout bands with fitness trackers
 Augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) headsets
 AI hearing aids
 Body-mounted sensors
 Medical alert monitors