Time Dilation
All mass communication pushes back the boundary of distance, but hardly conquers it. A runner, town crier, or even a smoke signal had a very limited range. Furthermore, none of these media conquered time. Once the echo of the crier bounced off the last wall, the message was gone forever; even the smoke signal lasted only a few minutes in calm air.
Our ancestor's first attempts to communicate across time were quite simple-they used song and rhyme as memory aids. Thanks to these simple techniques, a story might be remembered for years, instead of being forgotten in days. A minstrel singing a rhyme was a more effective communicator than a town crier announcing the news. Important rules and regulations were often set to rhyme as a learning aid. Today's catchy advertising jingles (the kind you find yourself humming in the middle of the day) have their roots in our early need to communicate in a memorable way-to expand the prison of time.
Ancient cultures who mastered mummification and monument-building fought to overcome time. Their buildings and artifacts communicated with future generations, but it was the invention of writing that enabled humans to send ideas into the future, as well as to learn from the dead.
Even the best of archaeologists, however, can't definitely say ,.,:hat our ancestors looked like. We have no photograph of Alexander the Great, or Socrates. Paintings are not totally reliable. How could exact images of the present be preserved for the future?
Exactly how wasn't discovered until 1835, when William Henry Fox Talbot, the father of modern photography, set small boxes containing a lens and sheets of paper covered with silver halide chemicals about the lawns of his English estate. Talbot, a scientist and country gentleman, waited one-half hour, then brought the boxes inside and opened their doors. Inside each was a miniature picture of the object before which it had been placed. Talbot succeeded on a grander scale than the Egyptians-he invented photography-a way to conquer time, to send images into the future. Now, even the ordinary person's image could be preserved on chemically treated paper for future generations. Alive on earth today is the first generation of humans to know what their great grandparents looked like. William Talbot's little boxes enabled ordinary people to preserve themselves far better than King Tutankhamen or a feudal lord, who could afford the luxury of having their portraits painted.
