THE DISTANT MESSAGE OF THE TRANSISTOR

IN terms of human lives, one of the most revolutionary inventions in this age of communication is the transistor radio. Those plangent little boxes, as large in sound as they are small in size, massaging the minds of ambling adolescents or committing public nuisances on train and bus and crowded beach, are hard to take seriously as a development in the tradition of the printing press. But in much the same way that printing opened up vast new possibilities to 15th century Europe, the transistor is letting in the world to hundreds of millions still isolated from the 20th century by geography, poverty and exploitation.

On the grassy Tanzanian plain a stately Masai herdsman strides behind his scrawny cattle, a lion-killing spear in one hand and a country-music-blaring Japanese transistor in the other. Transistors sway from the long necks of plodding camels deep in the Saudi desert, and from the horns of oxen plowing the furrows of Costa Rica. Radios are replacing the storytelling dervishes in the coffeehouses of Turkey and Iran, and they are standard equipment in the tea stalls of Pakistan. Thailand's klongs echo to transistor music from peddlers' sampans; a visitor to an Ecuadorian minga, in which the Indians come together for communal road building, calculated that at least one tiny transistor radio was sounding its unavoidable message every 20 yards along the two-mile road. Radio has long been the window on the world for isolated areas, but the cheapness and portability of the transistor set has given the medium a new mobility and a new dimension--and a vast measure of influence. For Peru's 12 million inhabitants, there are more than 600 radio stations, and radio reaches the ears of virtually every man, woman and child in the country.* In Guatemala, six times as many people listen to radio as read newspapers. Black Africa, which had fewer than 400,000 radios in 1955, has at least 6,000,000 today. In rice field or rain forest, compound or kraal, the mere possession of a transistor radio confers status on its owner--who has perhaps gone hungry to make his down payment, and worked a little harder to keep up the installments. Thus, even before a sound emerges from it, the radio has exerted a social force. And once it is turned on, it is left on from morning to night, pouring out fuel for hopes and dreams. The possibilities that exist in this force are enormous. "If it were a question of getting the first road or the first radio into a village," says a Malaysian official, "I would choose radio any time."

Learning Through the Ears

The most important factor in radio's power is that it hurdles the literacy barrier. "I cannot read and I cannot write," says a Peruvian mining peon, in some wonder, "but I am learning through my ears." Highly conscious of what can be taught through hearing, a group of Peruvian businessmen, political leaders and educators founded and funded ERPA (Escuelas Radiofonicas Populares Americanas) with the aim of making listeners "better farmers, better cattlemen and better Peruvians." Operated as a nonprofit venture, ERPA is sending educational broadcasts to people who live as far as 15,000 ft. up in the Andes, offering organized study of such subjects as farming, health and home management, economics, religion, citizenship, sports and cooking.

Radio has become a major weapon in India's desperate campaigns to reduce the birth rate and increase the food supply. Still woefully short of transistors, the Indians have been experimenting with "Radio Rural Forums" in which clubs of 15 to 20 peasants listen twice a week to a program of advice and carry the word to others. Family-planning units have been set up at radio stations that can reach half the population. One effect is that, hearing birth control discussed on the radio, the people even in remote towns are losing their inhibitions and are willing to discuss the subject freely. Educational efforts are cropping up in many parts of the world, sometimes with odd turns. In Malawi, the most popular song on the radio is a swinging exhortation to cleanliness and health written by Jack Allison, 23, a Peace Corps medical assistant from Fort Myers, Fla. Title: Brush Away the Flies from Your Children's Eyes. Educational radio is only in the beginning phase in the developing countries. In most of them, commercial broadcasting has taken a strong lead and is in command. In Thailand the selling became so incessant that last year commercials were banned entirely. Even as the war rages on in South Viet Nam, that country's commercial radio is reaching into the most remote huts through the transistor. Montagnard kids walk through the hills whistling the tunes of singing commercials.

Take Heed

It is the ubiquitous commercial, with its suggestion of the richer, more varied urban life, that is widely blamed for one of the negative effects of the radio revolution: the escalation of expectations far beyond the capacity for their fulfillment. One ugly manifestation of this in developing lands is the increasing surge of rural people to the cities, encrusting urban areas with fetid shantytowns and filling the streets with ragged peasants looking for nonexistent jobs. Another less critical but still unhappy result is cultural loss. A Mexican family's evening once focused on singing to the guitar, but this is rapidly giving way to the disk jockey.

A far greater capacity for ill effects from the transistor age lies in the demagogic use of radio by political leaders. A significant case in point is Gamal Abdel Nasser. He is virtually a creature of radio, having used it both within Egypt and internationally ever since he came to power. His Radio Cairo reaches out to all the Arab world and far beyond. With the spread of the transistor, this reach became longer and deeper. It took only one broadcast over Radio Cairo during the Middle East war to convince most of the Arab world that the U.S. and Britain were giving Israel air cover, and many still believe it.

Fortunately, and perhaps surprisingly, such gullibility has its limits. Radio Peking sends the strongest signal on the air in Brazil. It is sharply audible in the deepest Amazon jungle. Yet the Brazilian peasant seems to be pragmatic enough, and possibly cynical enough, that he is hard to convince by propaganda. He simply wants to learn things that are useful to him. Another fortunate fact is that the Peking programs are dull. If the Communists were capable of making their shows more appealing, the results might be devastating.

As more and more transistor sets pour into the hills and jungles and ghettos of the world, hundreds of millions of lives will be lured by them into the turbulence of this midcentury, with its hankerings for anarchy, its hunger for more things and less labor. It is incalculably important that the developed nations of the world--and especially the U.S.--should take heed of the possibilities and perils that this prospect holds. The Voice of America, which in a way is tailoring its programming to the transistor listener--through short, bright bursts rather than long sequences--places its taped programs with local stations around the world. This is a start, but it is amply apparent that the Western democracies need to show increasing and intelligent concern. The distant message of the transistor is that the world is being opened into millions of ears, including those of the most isolated human beings, and what gets into their minds as a result will be of crucial importance.

* In the U.S., 98.1% of all people over 18 listen to the radio, according to a survey made for CBS, and 71.1% of these really listen, rather than use it as background while they do something else.

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