The Nation at Your Fingertips

https://archive.org/details/0713_Nation_at_Your_Fingertips_The_09_41_22_00

     I watched the video The Nation at Your Fingertips for this week's weekend homework. This was a very interesting video about the telephone and all of the work that goes behind making one phone (in 1951). The telephone revolutionized America. It provided hundreds of thousands of jobs due to the need for operators and toll-writers. I am amazed at how much behind the scenes effort went into making one phone call.
     This film is useful to students of our modern information infrastructure because it puts our advancements into perspective. I believe that the students of today take our cell phones for granted. We text thousands of times a day to people all around the world. No matter where you are sending the message to, that person will receive what you said within seconds. In the 1940s and 1950s, that wasn't the case.  In order to make one phone, a worker would have to connect you to the person you were trying to reach. Imagine how crazy that would get!
   In the film, the narrator talks about how not all phones can be connected in the US. An example of this would be if I wanted to call my friend in Colorado, but I lived in NY, that wouldn't be possible. The narrator proposes a question: "What about the remaining telephones in the bell system? The answer lies in the future" he says.  The narrator was correct. Within just a few short years after making this video, all phones were connected in the US.
     I think the best part about this film for me was the title.  This film was created in 1951, and even with all of the phone's limitations during this time period, the film was titled The Nation at Your Fingertips. If people thought that the telephone gave people "the nation at their fingertips," I think they would be mind blown at what a smartphone is capable of doing today.  Today, we really do have the nation at our fingertips, although I'm not sold on that being the case in 1951.