Berth, Christiane (Author)
In the late nineteenth century, local governments began to install telephone lines in Latin American cities. Among the first countries to introduce telephone service were Cuba, Chile, and Mexico, all of whom did so in the 1880s. At first, the telephone was a medium of communication for urban elites. It entered government offices, enterprises, and a limited number of private households. Mexico City for example, published its first phone directory in 1888, with only 800 entries. Articles on the telephone, published in contemporary cultural magazines show that the new medium sparked both curiosity and fear among urban people.[1] Journalists responded with technical explanations and instructions for adequate use, along side caricatures and ads projecting their own views of telephone use. When technologies are new, theories about the social construction of technology suggest that many different people will be involved in negotiating how best (and properly) to use it. This essay will explore the fears and hopes about the telephone and how these articulated ideas about the what telephones are for, and how they should or should not be used. Theories of social construction of technology emphasize that this stage is one of “interpretive flexibility” where the meanings of new technoogies are not yet fixed. As different groups of people explore their fears and hopes, it becomes possible to better understand how a consensus about the purpose, meaning, and proper use of a technology came into being.[2] Magazines and newspapers were critical to the process.
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