SUBJECT:

While to talk may be 'good', what it’s good for is less obvious. The consequences of the technologies of communication (telephones, radios, film, television) have been surprising for individuals, communities and politics. The collections held by the National Museum of Film, Photography & Television are matched by key icons of other technologies, ranging from a telephone given to Queen Victoria, to the computer on which the World Wide Web was devised. The existence of a technology such as the telephone has not of course determined its precise application. Telephone pioneers had many separate plans and, more than a century after the original invention of the telephone, the uses of the mobile phone are still being tested. Television viewing, too, has had unexpected implications. For example, wars have come into our homes, and the political consequences of that are still unfolding.