Communication technology

Communication technology is the set of technologies used to handle information and aid communication, sending data in analogue or digital form, together with the hardware, the organisations that run it and the social values around it. As the technology pioneer Sam Pitroda put it, 'distance is dead': a student in a small town can now attend a lecture given in another continent.

Two kinds of technology:

• Cable (land) based: messages travel along wires or cables, as with a landline telephone or a computer on a wired network. These are generally cheaper and simpler.
• Wireless: messages travel through the air as radio waves, microwaves or via satellites, as with radio broadcasting, satellite TV and Bluetooth. Wireless needs less infrastructure (no cables to lay to every home) but can be more expensive to use.

Radio reaches everyone: across mountains and deserts, rich and poor, literate and non-literate, young and old. Cheap battery-run transistor sets carried radio to the remotest villages. Farm programmes, health messages and music on radio still reach people that print cannot.

Television came to India in 1959, at first for education and rural development. In 1975, the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) used a satellite to bring educational programmes to villages across several states. TV's visual techniques (close-ups, demonstrations, animation) make messages vivid and easy to remember.

Other modern technologies:

• Micro-computers: for keeping records and accounts, desktop publishing, and linking to the rest of the world through the internet.
• Video text: text and graphics sent to a screen.
• E-mail: fast written messages, with attachments, to anyone with an address.
• Interactive video: video that responds to the user's choices, used in training.
• Teleconferencing (and video conferencing): people in different places meet and talk without travelling.
• Bluetooth: short-range wireless links between devices, such as a phone and earphones.

Technology and people. Technology carries messages faster and further than ever, but it does not replace human skills. Listening, speaking clearly, reading a person's expressions and responding with care in face-to-face contact remain essential, especially in sensitive matters such as health, counselling or teaching young children.