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Remembering Novemeber 22, 1963

I was a senior at Portland State College 40 years ago when the news of the President Kennedy assassination was announced in my morning geology course. The professor canceled class as we stunned students sought out information wherever we could find it.

There was no Internet or desk top computers to access instant information in 1963. There was no CNN or FOX news. In fact there was no cable television in Portland. For most of us television was limited to three national networks broadcasting in black and white. Most television news was shot on 16mm film, processed, and broadcast in the evening. The Presiden'ts assassination would change television news in the days and years that followed.

Radio provided the primary news that morning for we who huddled around transistor radios student shared with one another. We listen attentively, visualizing the day's events in the theater of our imagination.Not even the Cuban missile crisis and the threat of nuclear war had affected us as much as the radio reports out of Dallas.

Television networks, lacking today's satellite communication technology,used land based networks for live coverage. Live field reporting was a technique only then being developed and the transmission of information was sometimes crude. But it was TV that became the medium to which people turned to watch at home, in front of store windows, or anywhere a television set could be found.With the Kennedy assasination, television became the choice for news and information and would remain so for decades to come.

No country had ever been more united through a medium as was the US by television the day of the Kennedy funeral. It was broadcast live and for the first time millions of people collectively shared a single common sound and visual experience as the flag draped caisson carried the President to his final resting place in the Arlington cemetery.

Technology changes the way we experience national events. Today students turn to the Internet rather than TV for news. At the click of a few keystrokes he or she can access world reaction and opinion.Just as television replaced radio and print media, the Internet is the new medium of communication to which people turn for instant information.

As I look back this weekend on the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, I realize that the media technology and culture in which I have worked has changed more quickly than I have been aware. That change is most evident when I imagine the late President walking into today's White House. Yes, he might find the building familiar but upon closer examination the tools of communication may astound him. Here he would find high definition flat screen television with access to hundreds of cable channels, desktop computers capable of offering two-way video conference exchanges, word processing instead of typing, cell phones with video displays, the wonder of the Internet, digital video cameras, film less still cameras, instant satellite communication, DVD and CD materials, and perhaps even music playing on a Presidential iPod.(See:Technology Timeline: 1 )

As I look forward, I wonder what our world of media communication will be like in another 40 years. If I'm lucky, I might write about in November, 2043 at the advanced age of 102. Perhaps I'll be using some type of thought to data transmission process.

Here is to the future and the unknown world we are creating today. May we always look back to see where we've been, as we make decisions about the future.