New means of communication

In the past, men viewed different modes of communication, such as telegraphy and telephony, as being fundamentally different in kind, a view that has been dispelled by technological advances and especially by the communications theory of Shannon. The way is now open to achieve a universality in electrical communications systems analogous to that of the human nervous system in which different sensory functions-vision, hearing, taste, etc.-are served by uniform nervous transmission lines that differ only in the different types of sensory transducers in which they terminate. There are technical problems and challenges in achieving a future universal communication system that will serve all man's needs, but there are also other obstacles rooted in obsolete social and legal concepts.