[Air-l] Is all Communication Commercial?

Charlie Balch charlie at balch.org
Thu Jul 12 17:09:21 PDT 2007


After making some very interesting points, Dr. Kuskis asks "Can anyone name
a communication technology that has not been used for commercial purposes." 

What a great question! What do "communication technology" and "commercial"
mean? Does altruism exist? Perhaps communication is the oldest profession. I
do not communicate unless I get some value from the communication. Value can
be measured in a number of ways -- nothing is going into my bank account as
result of my response to this question but I'm paying for the privilege to
be able to respond and value the thoughts of other members of this list.

Would Ham radio which explicitly does not allow commercial use qualify? I
know that various organizations make some profit in materials useful in
training for the ham license which has become a lot easier to get now that
morse code is not required. Other companies earn money selling ham radio
equipment.

What about various open source software projects such as FileZilla and VLC?
I suppose they have also been used for commercial purposes too but the
authors have not profited from such use. I don't recall seeing
advertisements on Wikipedia either but I have seen some requests for
donations.

Hmmm. Even the AOIR list server has been used to distribute information
about books and conferences. Does that make this list commercial?

Charles Balch MEd, MBA, Ph.D.
Professor of CIS
Arizona Western College



-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Alexander Kuskis
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 5:59 PM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] ICE-T again

I don't think we need to bother with the dismal science in understanding the
link between communication and commerce. They have had a close relationship
at least since the invention of writing in Mesopotamia during the late 4th
century BC. Denise Schmandt-Besserat has traced the origin of writing itself
to the symbols and markings made on clay tokens used for accounting purposes
in the 4th Century BC Middle East, roughly jn the area where Iraq is today.
See http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exschhop.html . Furthermore,
business has been quick to adopt every major communication technology, from
Gutenberg's printing press up to our own era. The Internet is something of
an exception in this regard, because commercial applications were explicitly
forbidden during its ARPANET and later NSF days. But business has more than
made up for it since. We need not invoke McLuhan's identification of money
as a communication medium itself to understand commerce as communication.
E-commerce, like e-learning, is simply a major application of ICT. Can
anyone name a communication technology that has not been used for commercial
purposes?.........Alex

Alex Kuskis, PhD
Adjunct Professor
MA Progam in Communication & Leadership
School of Professional Studies
Gonzaga University





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