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Technologies

By Roy Peter Clark

1. QWERTY Keyboard -- From the 19th century typewriter to the Blackberry in your pocket, this arrangement of letters has produced most of the world's journalism across all media and platforms.
2. Printing Press -- Can't have freedom of the press without the press, right Mr. Gutenberg? And who can resist an invention that can also be used to crush grapes for wine?
3. Internet -- Forget about the porn and the gambling sites, this technology brings the world to your computer screen, and you to the world.
4. Telegraph -- The most influential news technology of all time, separating, for the first time, news delivery from geography. Everything since has been a riff.
5. Daguerrotype -- An early form of photography, the technology that could transport the reader through an image to another place and time.
6. Radio -- Think of all those Americans and Brits sitting around the radio consoles during World War II, listening to voices from Winchell to Murrow. Think of listening to the Beatles on your little transistor.
7. Shoe leather -- At risk in a digital world, still the best and most reliable tool for arriving at a real (not a virtual) place.
8. Television -- Many remember the exact moment when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Even in black and white, this was a chilling experience that gave us the sense that we could ultimately witness anything at any time.
9. Telephone -- "Hello, Mable, get me rewrite!" A tool to expand our interviewing reach and to deliver the results of our field reporting.
10. Internal combustion engine -- Before you could call in your story, you had to get to that crime scene or warehouse fire. (Sadly, it also created pollution, sprawl and the War in Iraq.)
11. Satellite communication -- These eyes in the skies turned out to be a much better payload for the world than moon rocks.
12. Eyeglasses and the green eyeshade -- Two young journalists at Poynter never heard of green eyeshades, but what percentage of journalists can go without corrective lenses?
13. Google -- A funny name for an amazing search technology. Found a way to steal journalists' stuff and give it away for free.
14. Cell phone -- The bell on the cat, this technology puts reporters and sources on a wireless leash.
15. Cable -- The technology responsible for 24 hour news networks, ESPN, HBO documentaries, not to mention Cinemax.
16. Digital Photography -- Allows civilians to capture news events as eyewitnesses, images that can be harvested by news organizations and distributed online.

Full post as published by Writing Tools on March 12, 2008 (boomark / email).