A Call for Grounding in the Face of Blurred Boundaries

Scholars of human communication and technology have a past far deeper than many of its contemporary practitioners realize. In recent years, the origins of what we do under this moniker have often been located around the mid-1970s when Short, Williams, and Christie (1978) proposed Social Presence Theory. Far deeper origins are to be found, however, when one realizes that technology need not mean computing nor be digital. We have other precedents, and other technologies. Human communication and technology begins with the invention of writing. It includes pigeon training, ink, woodblocks, 16 th -century books, and 17 th -and 18 th -century pamphlets. It includes photography, audio recording, radio waves, moving pictures, the telegraph, television, and countless other technologies, more of which have been forgotten than remembered. There are long traditions of scholarship into these other once-new technologies.