Dennis Baron writes of the telephone and its uses in the modern world in comparison to what was believed to have come from it when it was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. People thought that the telephone would be useless.  It was a conversation without a record of it ever happening, and people could not understand what good could come of that.  Given the opportunity of buying the rights to the telephone, Samuel F. B. Morse turned down Bell thinking the invention a foolhardy idea.  Carolyn Marvin explains all of this in her book, When Old Technologies Were New, and goes in depth as to what really happened to the telephone as the years went by. Marvin discusses many technologies and how society adapted to using them in different manners.  Her work focuses on electrical technologies when they were first developed and their uses.  I believe that Baron used this book because it goes into great depth of how technologies were originally seen and used but more importantly, misused.

Misused, not in malice but in ignorance, the telephone was not only misused but misunderstood at the time.  People could not figure out what could possibly be useful about a conversation that would never be recorded.  Then people realized that the telephone could eliminate distance for when nothing physical needed to be transferred, as in knowledge.  If teachers could educate students over the phone, there would be no need for a large schoolhouse to be built.  If farmers could order what they needed over the phone, they would wait less time before they got what they needed. While the telephone brought about some of the changes for the better, it did cause some distress. Some, understanding only the beneficial side of the technology, pushed for its usage more than necessary and forgot that there was a cost tied to the telephone, especially in its initial stages.  Marvin shows how with time came not only more functions and acceptance of technology but also how the technology itself improved becoming cheaper and more effective.  This gives an unexpected contrast to how it was in the beginning, but also shows where some traditions come from.  Marvin gives the example of wives telling their husbands to call home and tell them they got to their destination safely, not understanding the cost behind such a conversation.  Seeing how this tradition started out and how it carried into the modern world contrasts how the phone became a part of business much slower, with businesses wanting records of conversations and transactions more formal than over a telephone.

Another reason that Baron could have used When Old Technologies Were New as one of his sources.  Computers are part of everyday life and if you live in a first world country it is nearly impossible to go a single day without interacting with a computer on some level and especially hard if you want to communicate ideas on a broad level.  Given that When Old Technologies Were New was written in 1988 and little was known about the possibilities for computers on the broad scale, this book provides evidence that the telephone, as well as many other technologies all go through the same first stages like misunderstanding and misuse, then slow acceptance with strong voices against it.  Baron applies this structure to the computer in how professors wouldn't tell students about spell checkers on their word processors but now, as Dr. Essid puts in this assignment, students must use the spell checker every time. Marvin uses the book, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930, by Thomas P. Hughes, just as Baron used her book to support his ideas.

Marvin used Networks of Power because of its focus on the early years or electricity as a whole, how it was planned and engineered into simplicity so that the existing civilizations could be interconnected by electricity at a relatively simple level.  This is what Marvin was after, looking for the beginning of electricity as a whole.  Seeing as almost all technology is built using electricity, and visually uses electricity to perform its core functions, modern technology is directly attributable to electricity.  Hughes focuses on the development of electricity through cities and they way it was planned starting with how it was originally accepted.  He begins with Edison's ideas and the way he saw the electrical grids as something larger than a simple invention of quaint possibility.  Maybe Edison didn't understand how far it could take society, because at the time it must have been incomprehensible the possibilities that would come with time.  This ties back to Baron with the suggestion that the simplicity of communication on a computer has grown to communication over the internet.  The attributions continue going back but all tie together as Baron could have used Thomas' book just as Marvin did and Marvin could easily incorporate Baron's work into her own.  It's all connected, just like the electricity.

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