A history of channels is really a history of humans communicating with purpose. 

​From campfires in Ancient China to the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg ... the first radio station established by Marconi  ... the first televised images by Scottish inventor John Logie Baird ... the first handheld mobile telephone call, made by Motorola employee Martin Cooper ... Tim Berners-Lee's proposal for what would become the world wide web ... the launch of Wikipedia ... and, let's not forget, Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction accelerating the creation of YouTube. 

We just can't seem to find enough ways to connect, communicate and exchange with each other.

Speech and language
2 million years ago (maybe)

The origins of speech are blurry, lacking in empirical evidence and a matter of much debate and endless theories. There are many challenges, not the least of which is that speech organs don’t fossilise. As a result, dates for the origin of speech scurry around from between two million to 50,000 years ago. But some of the theories are delightful. For example, the ‘bow-wow or cuckoo theory’ hypothesises that our speech started by imitating the sounds around us. The ‘pooh-pooh theory’ suggests it started with emotional exclamations, like when we accidentally hit our thumb with a rock. The 'yo-he-ho theory' posits that language emerged from collective rhythmic labour ... heave ho :) 

Campfires
400,000 to 100,000 years ago

The earliest evidence of campfires has been found in Swartkrans, South Africa and the Zhoukoudian cave, China. At least over 100,000 years ago (and probably closer to 400,000), we were sitting around a ‘human-made and controlled’ fire, sharing stuff.  “The mammoth was this big! True story!” … "The best hunting spots are here.” …  “You can gather the sweetest berries over there.” Telling stories with a purpose (and creating a few myths along the way) has been a time-honoured tradition in all cultures from Australian Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander dreamtime stories through Aesop’s fables and Medieval troubadours right up to the modern day strategic story telling. In-person communication channels remain, to this day, the most powerful.

Cave paintings
60,000 to 30,000 years ago

The earliest cave paintings have been found in Sulawesi, Indonesia and Arnhem Land Plateau, Australia. Between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago, we started expressing our ideas, emotions and views on cave walls. What is interesting about these paintings is there is little evidence to suggest anyone actually lived in the caves; so, what was their purpose? Aesthetic? Spiritual? News headlines for the next passers by? Hunting instructions. We were here?

Musical instruments
35,000 years ago

The earliest musical instrument, a flute made from mammoth bone, was found in the Geissenklösterle Cave, Southern Germany. At least 35,000 years ago, we had moved on from imitating the natural sounds and rythmns around us to using instruments to give those sounds a bit more polish, repeat them on demand and create new sounds.  A form of intentional expression for entertainment, communication, game playing, luring animals in a hunt or simply reflecting the world around us, capturing what we hear and feel … past, present and future … and sharing it with others. Music on its own can reach deep within us, which is why, today, it remains a powerful way to communicate or enhance communications.

Writing tools
10,000 years ago

The earliest papyrus, about bread and beer for the workers heading out from port, was found at Wadi al-Jarf, Egypt and the earliest wax tablet was found in the Uluburun Shipwreck near Kaş, Turkey.  Around 10,000 years ago we started developing writing systems. These evolved from cave painting to petroglyphs, pictograms and ideograms into the first logographic writing system in Ancient Sumer (around 3,000 years ago). By 2700 BC, the Egyptians had a set of some 22 hieroglyphs and around 1700 BC, the Semitic alphabet appeared which morphed into the Phoenician alphabet, the Aramaic alphabet and finally the Greek alphabet which is considered the first ‘true alphabet’. But all that writing would not have gone anywhere (nor in fact be found after so many years) without something to write on, store and distribute it. Ancient channels like parchment (animal skin), clay, cloth, stone, metal, birch bark, papyrus and the wax tablets - we’ve used them all to capture complex ideas and pass them along to others.

Print
1450

Arguably one of the biggest leaps in communication was Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the mechanical printing press around 1450. Although, it should be noted, that movable type printing was invented and developed in China by printer Bi Sheng somewhere between 1041 and 1048. Despite the power of digital communications, we shouldn't ever dismiss the tangibility, legitimacy and gravitas of print. It still has its place in the mix. People still like to hold something in their hand and, whilst we have said goodbye to classics such as Life magazine, printed publications are still going strong. And let's not forget 3D printing which is now fulfilling its potential ...

Environment (out of home)
1796

Although outdoor advertising can be traced back to the earliest civilisations, it took a leap in 1796 when German actor and author Alois Senefelder invented lithographic printing as a way to promote theatrical works with posters. It wasn't long before we worked out ways posters could stay up for long periods of time, by building structures in locations with high exposure to people passing by, and the billboard was born. Today, outdoor channels are ubiquitous and a breeding ground for creative ways (from playable posters to pop-up shops) to catch people's attention wherever they are go. 

Radio
1897

Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio, set up the world’s first radio station (albeit experimental) on the Isle of Wight in 1897. Marconi was reported to have asked: “Have I done the world good or have I added a menace?” His question was quickly answered. In 1912, Marconi’s invention was credited with the rescue of 700 survivors from the Titanic. The two radio operators on board the doomed ship were actually employees of the Marconi International Marine Communication Company. Australia's first broadcast station, 2CM, was licensed in 1922. Today, UNESCO reports more than 95% of the world’s population uses radio.  The 13th February is World Radio Day.

Television
1925

On March 25, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silouhette images in motion, at Selfridge’s Department Store in London. Baird also made the world's first colour broadcast in 1938, started developing the world’s first electronic system in 1940 and demonstrated the world’s first practical colour television system in 1944. Although experimental television broadcasts were conducted in Australia as early as 1929, the first station to begin regular transmission was TCN9 Sydney in 1956. The new medium was introduced by Bruce Gyngell with the words 'Good evening, and welcome to television'. The US was the first country to introduce colour television transmission in the 1950s with Australia following in 1960s. Today we can watch TV not only in our lounge rooms, but on our computers, laptops, tablets and mobile phones. The 21st of November is World Television Day.

Wearables
​1961

Eyeglasses in 13th century. Timepieces in the 15th century. Tech writer Kinza Yasar points out that we've been wearing technology for some time. But it was in the 1960s that modern wearable technology came into existence. In 1961, Edward Thorp and Claude Shannon (the father of information theory*) created wearable technology in the form of a tiny four-button computer that could fit into a shoe or be strapped around the user's waist.

Let's leap ahead through calculator watches (1975) ... the Walkman (1979) ... wireless webcam (1994) ... Bluetooth headsets, Fitbits and Nike plus iPod Sport Kit (2000s) to Google Glass (2013) the Apple Watch (2015) and the Oculus Rift Headset (2016) ... and now, in the 2020s we have a new generation of AR and VR headsets, haptic feedback and Bluetooth being used in 'intelligent' clothing and AR smart glasses being developed by Apple.

Where to next? A number of big companies are are working on developing smart contact lenses and, wait for it, a whole new frontier is being explored: wearing things inside our bodies which will enable brain-compuer interfacing. Like so many other science fiction stories, Johnny Mnemonic is becoming a reality.

* Shannon's ideas not only pushed forward the development of the internet, but also numerous technologies like ZIP files, sending the Voyager into deep space and GIFs

The World Wide Web
1969

Here’s how the story goes. In 1957, Russia launched Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. It spent three months in orbit before burning up on re-entry. That was long enough, in Cold War times, to bother some people. In response, in 1958, the US Department of Defence established the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). In 1969, ARPA established an agency network called ARPANET which linked the US military with scientists and academic researchers. In 1982, TCP/IP was introduced as the standard networking protocol on the ARPANET. In 1972, the term ‘internet’ was coined at Stanford University to describe a network of networks. In 1989, Britsh scientist Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal to his employers at CERN (the famous particle physics laboratory near Geneva) for a system to access the internet. This was the foundation for the World Wide Web as we know it. It included technologies we still use today, such as the HTML publishing format, URI addresses and HTTP.  In April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web technology would be available for anyone to use on a royalty-free basis. Since then, it would be fair to say, the Web has changed the world. But there's still a long way to go. In 2014, the United Nations International Telecommunications Union reported that by the end of 2014, only 40% of the world's population would be using the internet. This means 60% of the world's population remains unconnected. In contrast, as of 2014, around 89% of Australians had internet access.

Mobile
1973

There is no where, where the convergence of technologies and channels is more evident than our mobile phones.

In 1926, train telephony services developed by German company Zugtelephonie AG, were offered to first class passengers en route between Hamburg and Berlin. During WWII, radio telephony links were used by Military. In the late 1940s, both Bell Labs and AT&T rolled out a system to allow people to place and receive telephone calls from automobiles. The first fully-automated mobile phone system for vehicles was rolled out in Sweden in 1956 and shortly after in Russia. But it wasn’t until 1973 that mobile phones, as we know them today, took shape. On 3 April of that year Motorola employee Dr Martin Cooper made the first call from a handheld device to Dr Joel Engel of Bell Labs. The handheld phone prototype used by Dr Cooper weighed 1.1 kg and measured 23 cm long, 13 cm deep and 4.45 cm wide. It offered a talk time of just 30 minutes and took 10 hours to re-charge. Today, mobile platforms (or Fourth Screen technologies as they are sometimes called) include smart phones, tablets, e-readers and wearable tech that can go with us almost everywhere. Almost but not really everywhere. In 2014, the Australian Government's Mobile Black Spot Program highlighted at least 6,000 locations around the nation with poor reception ... and not surprisingly the vast majority are in regional, rural and remote areas.

(More than just) social media
1979

In 1979, CompuServe became the first service to offer electronic mail capabilities and technical support to personal computer users. It followed this up in 1980, with the first real-time chat online service called CB Simulator. Then along came AOL which allowed members to create online communities, complete with searchable Member Profiles. 

In 1995, classmates.com, which allowed us to find long lost school mates, hit the ground running (and it's still running today). During this time, we rebelled decisively against the prophecy of DEC chairman and founder Ken Olson, who, in 1977, was quoted as saying: "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." 

In 2003, LinkedIn connected us in the business world. 

In 2006, when it leapt from the Harvard community to the global community, Facebook gave us a way to make more friends and share what we like. In the same year, Twitter started teaching us that we only need 140 characters or less to broadcast our news and connect with other broadcasters. 

In 2005, YouTube made its debut and is beloved by anyone who likes sound and movement and wants to find things quickly without having to subscribe. Now owned by Google, YouTube allows us to catch up on music, film, tv and sports (whether contemporary or historical), learn how stuff works and how to do things. The 2015-16 Innovation in Magazine Media World Report highlighted that video is now the dominant format for both content and advertising and predicts that 79% of global consumer web traffic is projected to be video by 2018.

In 2007, Google+ was launched as a 'social layer across all of Google's services'. This hasn't necessarily inspired everyone to delve into Google's other services but has given us the ability to form communities around serious topics of interest like business, economics and science and 'hangout' online for discussions and demonstrations. Also in 2007, we met Tumblr, sometimes called the anti-blogging site because it seems to have attracted those of us who want to share things that matter to us with actual friends in real life and who like our world to be animated (gif friendly). 

In 2010, we were introduced to Pinterest, a visual playground for anyone who likes researching, collecting, list making, organising, categorising, curating and archiving ... you get the picture. Also in 2010, Instagram lept onto the scene and, although now owned by Facebook, it has its own groove, attracting a community of people who believe a picture tells a thousand words, who love creativity and are more into genuine connection than going viral.

In 2013, we discovered on Twitter-owned Vine that you can create and share epic experiences in only 6 seconds (does anyone remember 'blipverts' from the cyberpunk TV movie Max Headroom?)

Today there are endless social media sites and apps.

​The key to not feeling overwhelmed by the choices is to understand they are simply communities which have formed around common interests and preferred ways of self expression, as they have been doing since the dawn of time. They are the campfires of our day.

The only difference is that they provide us with easier and quicker ways to connect with or create those communities on multiple platforms. Equally, there are groups around the world which are rebelling. Take lomography for example, an art-based movement of analogue camera users and appreciators ... but even they use digital channels to communicate :)

MMOGs or MMORPGs
1988

In 1988, the flight combat simulation game Air Warrior became a major milestone in the creation of multiplayer games. Massively multiplayer online games (or massively multiplayer online role playing games), although another social media platform, deserve a mention in their own right because they go directly to human motivation. The fact is that we don’t just want to connect and socialise we also want to achieve something and we’re prepared to work for it … as Dan Pink so eloquently explains in his presentation The surprising truth about what motivates us. A great way of seeing this in action is the rise of MMOGs, some of them so sophisticated that challenges and interactions have become very real to a lot of people. Just take a look at World of Warcraft or Second Life. If you dismiss these as child’s play, check out Jane McGonigal’s TED talk Gaming can make a better world.

State Library of Victoria, January 1967 / Mark Strizic

Search Engines
1990

'Build it and they will come' is not applicable to the digital age. We have to help people find what we build. The first tool for searching the Internet was Archie which began as a project for students and volunteer staff at the McGill University School of Computer Science and was widely in use by 1990. From then, as the internet grew denser with websites, search engines have been consistently rolled out. To name a few. Web Crawler in 1994. Yahoo! in 1995 (which  morphed into Yahoo! Search in 2004). Dogpile and Ask Jeeves in 1996. Google in 1998 (which in 2014 had around 68% market share), along with MSN Search (which was repackaged as Bing in 2009). Baidu in 2000. Ask.com in 2006. Halalgoogling in 2013. Today, search engine optimisation is a critical capability.

Mobile apps
1994

I have seen tech purists define a mobile app as an application developed and distributed by a third party (not the device manufacturer) and installed on the device by the owner.  But if we take a simple view and say it is any computer application which can run on a mobile device then, to fully appreciate the history of this phenomenon, we need to go back to 1994 when the first game was put on a mobile phone. The game was Tetris (invented in Russia) and the phone was the Hagenuk MT-2000 (produced in Denmark). Three years later Nokia launched the very successful Snake game. Since then it's been tidal wave. From game play to work:life management, we can't seem to get enough apps. In 2008, Apple's App Store opened for business as did Google Play (formerly known as the Android Market). These two ground breakers were followed by: BlackBerry World, Samsung App Store and Nokia Store in 2009; Windows Phone Store in 2010; and the Amazon App Store in 2001.  The word 'app' itself has become so popular that, in 2010, the American Dialect Society listed it as the Word of the Year. 

Knowledge sharing ... the 'wiki' way
1995

‘Wiki’ is a Hawaiian word meaning quick. In communications speak, it’s an application, typically on the web, which allows collaborative creation and editing of its content and structure by users without any defined owner. The first ‘wiki’ application, WikiWikiWeb, was launched in 1995 by its inventor Ward Cunningham. Today, there are hundreds of online reference projects using the 'wiki' model. The most popular is Wikipedia, launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. With its ‘wiki’ foundation, it broke all the rules of knowledge ownership - it belongs to anyone who can access the internet. As of March 2015, it’s the sixth most popular web application in the world.

Augmented and virtual reality
1991

Although we had to spin to get some motion going, we had our first taste of an immersive media experience with 360-degree panoramic murals in the 1860s. There have been many hops, skips and jumps since then. From visionary cinematographer Morton H Eilig’s Sensorama and Thomas A Furness III’s flight simulator for the US Air Force to MIT’s Aspen Movie Map. But it was in 1991, that a number of big leaps were made: 

• Jonathan Walden’s Virtuality launched complete with immersive headsets and exoskeleton gloves.
• NASA scientis Antonio Medina designed a VR system to drive Mars rovers from Earth.
• The Sega VR headset captured our imagination.
• Carolina Cruz-Neira, Daniel J. Sandin and Thomas A. DeFanti from Electronic Visualisation Lab created the first cubic immersive room, replacing goggles with a multi-projected environment where people can see their body and other people around.

1991 was a big year and we have online gamers to thank for pushing demand for this technology from then to now. Today we are on the verge of more-fully realising the potential of this technology for play, work and life. Google Glass teased us, albeit in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in 2014. Occulus Rift VR is already being beta tested but will get fierce competition from HTC Vive which may be released as early as November 2015. And then there is Microsoft Hololens - take a look at the video The race is on.
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Things were happening in the 1500s, but let's shake our tail feather to 2013 when the Samsung Galaxy Gear appeared.

it's not just about watches ... wearable technology could completely cover us one day...

​More to come ...​

• 3D printing
• artificial intelligence
• augmented reality
• biotechnology
• block chain
• Internet of Things
• nanotechnology
• quantum computing
• robotics
• virtual reality
• web3