Currently reading: The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage 📚

The Victorian Internet continues to delight. I’m now about a quarter of the way done and the one thing that is totally clear is that humans will find ways to streamline language that simultaneously mark a delineation between those in the know and those still outside. Whether it is marks scrawled inside boxcars by hobos, elaborate courting rituals revolving around the color and specific flowers sent and received, or jargon enabling one telegraph operator to more quickly pass key information up and down the line, humans are going to make shortcuts that are unintelligible to the uninitiated.

Or, at least, that’s what the book is hinting at. So far, we’ve only seen the development of the first optical telegraph give way to the competing electrical telegraph systems as they grow and proliferate throughout the world. Presumably, then, as these disparate systems begin to clash and compete with each other, the shortcuts taken by operators of different systems will begin to acquire a more us-or-them level of sophistication where a code that works for one company may not work for another.

The writing continues to be vivid and informative and I’m looking forward to seeing where this all goes. (Hint: eventually we get telephones and modems and the internet. God help us all.)

Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / Internet Archive / University of Toronto Libraries

File under: Reading Material