“Educate a boy, and you educate an individual. Educate a girl, and you educate a community.” ~ ― Adelaide Hoodless

Friday’s blog News over the Fence made me think further of how communications have changed over the ages. Through the decades we have gone from “meet me at the fence” to meet me on I.M. For those who are not tech savvy, that means meet me on the computer and we will talk digitally through instant messaging!

In the early years of telephone communications the women who ran the switchboards had their own web of communications through party lines. Reportedly the operators listened into everybody’s conversations, and when something of hot interest happened in small towns, the switchboard lit up, then the good word spread like wildfire throughout the community.

Women also gossiped when hanging laundry on the clotheslines in their yards, if their neighbors were close enough to dispatch the latest low-down.

Way back in history,  town criers broadcast news from the town square and men on horseback rode from town to town spreading the latest hearsay. The telegraph was also useful in tapping out messages of urgency.

When the printing press came into being, spreading the news became much easier. In fact, when I was growing up many newspapers, like the Baltimore Sun, had morning and evening editions of their daily publications.

These days, news travels in an instant through computers. And once it is broadcast digitally, there is no way to retract what we say. It’s delivered in the blink of an eye through cyberspace, so be careful. There can be great benefits to that however. It means we can learn of happenings and events globally, very quickly.

Return tomorrow on All Things Fulfilling, I’ll tell you a story of how news over the internet sidetracked my plans for Mother’s Day this year.

This blog brought to you by Sue Batton Leonard. Author of Gift of a Lifetime:Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected.Sue’s memoir