Is Evolving Media ≤ MediaEvolving?

               Ever heard the terms “Global village” or “Cyberspace”, perhaps the phrase the “medium is the message”? They all obviously refer the medium that we have all come to know and understand as the internet, right? Wrong- on both counts, all three quotes are nearly 65 years old, predating the internet as think we know and understand it by nearly 50 years, so how could they have anything to do with the internet? And as much as it pains me to say 99% of us do not truly understand the internet. Many believe that media and the internet are two separate concepts when in actuality Internet is media, an incredible over simplification it may seem but no, the internet is simply the most contemporary medium of communication, a complicated medium-but of media nonetheless. To truly understand the internet you must realize its foundation, not just from a series of networked 8 bit supercomputers in the desert somewhere you would begin at the inception of all media 100,000 years ago with the beginnings of verbal and symbolic communication, through the innovation of the automated printing press into the revolution from analog into the digital age of iPad and everything in between. Communication is media and media is evolving.

             
The Oracle of the Electronic Age
               Marshall McLuhan is considered by many as “the oracle of the electronic age” coined the term “Global Village” in the 1950’s, 40 years before it is used again to describe the internet so why is it such an incredible designation when discussing it more than 60 years later? McLuhan understood the power of media better than anyone in his time, realizing early on that media was evolving he was coined a prophet instead on someone who understood the power of communication as well as history’s penchant for repeating itself. When he initially coined the term “Global Village” he was initially referring to television, as that was simply the most contemporary and effective form of communication and media. McLuhan recognized the value of the medium simply in terms of the communication and sharing of information- such blasphemy led him to be ostracized by many in the academic community because they did not consider it to have any value as an “appropriate object of scholarly or pedagogical attention” (Strate, p. 175). Just as it was true 100,000 years ago, it was true in McLuhan’s time and it is true today, communication is the binding force of community; whether it be symbolic communication, cave drawings, language, or email the mediums or means we use to communicate influence how we view the world (Sapir-Whorf Principle of Linguistic Relativity) therefore the ease of communication thru technological means has created this “Global Village” removing the hindrance of physical distance. The early evidence of communities known as the “Creative Explosion” begins c. 30-20,000 years BCE with the first known appearance of communication; cave paintings demonstrated to later generations hunting tactics and farming methods, tally systems (notches in rope or sticks) demonstrated the first recordings of numerical data physical information. This provided the civilizations of the time to transverse time itself by communicating knowledge through the generations evolving the hunter/gather systems into the Agricultural Revolution 10,000 years ago. That major revolution took 10-20,000 years, the next took approximately 4,500 years in Mesopotamia (8,000 BCE) between the Sumerian writing originally consisting of pictographs and made up of hundreds of characters was incredibly hard to learn therefore only a few scribes were apprenticed to learn to record for administration, religious, literary, and scientific purposes, it wasn’t until a bilingual society was created between the Sumerians and Akkadia that cuneiform was invented c. 3,500. The bilingual nature of the society was the vehicle of inception of cuneiform, the ease of communication between one civilization to the next resulted in one of the greatest literary revolutions in history; the evolution from Old Assyrian cuneiform into the much simpler Semitic alphabet of only 22 characters occurred c. 1,500 BCE taking only approximately 2,000 years. It is also worth noting that the Semitic alphabet also included the concept of positional notation as well as the concept of 0 (zero) invented in India c. 3,000 BCE.

Communication: Sociocultural Evolution Stimulant

You surely noticed that as the boundaries of communication dwindle so do the time spans between the innovations, which is and will be the case for any medium in any century. The Semitic alphabet became the basis of Greek then Latin within another 1,500 years leading to the next great revolution, The Renaissance Era. The Renaissance which spanned a little more than 300 years from the 14^th to the 17^th centuries highlighted education, art and innovation- one of which was the mechanical clock invented by monks to keep track of prayer time for their disciples started the automated and mechanical revolution and another equally astonishing historically unparalleled innovation- the precursor for virtually every one that followed; metal movable type. Metal movable type as you would imagine accelerated the time tables of communication even more, no longer do books need to be hand written on parchment (made of the prepared skin of an animal) which made them much more affordable to the masses, education then changes the archetype of government leading to countless revolutions that never could have taken place otherwise and closing the poverty gap more with every passing generation.  Guttenberg’s automated type printing press came less than 200 years later, the steam engine and the industrial revolution less than 150 years after that.

The Industrial Revolution from 1750 to 1850 led to where changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times. The discovery of electricity by Benjamin Franklin in 1750 was virtually useless at first, only true use was the telegraph which wasn’t invented for almost 50 years and until the revelations of Thomas Edison of the light bulb was the “power of electricity” (pun intended) truly realized. Samuel Morse invents Morse Code, the true precursor to mass communication and the first appearance of the code that is the foundation for every computer device known to man, Binary. Binary code is a series of offs and ons separated by short lengths of time communicated via a current of electricity from one point to the next. Soon after, thanks to Reginald Fesseden, Gugliemo Marconi and Edwin Armstrong radio broadcasting begins the era of mass communication. No longer are stories told one to one, one to many is now the means of communication, McLuhan once said “It is the device that creates the revolution, not the medium,” “mass society” is coined to define how man is now connected at a level never once realized in human history. Factories begin popping up around large cities and decentralization begins; mass production leads to mass consumption, mass transportation is developed to transport the workforce. High voltage power lines sprung up connecting coast to coast and it wasn’t too long after that Alexander Graham Bell had invented the telephone and the telephone lines followed. The next great innovation that truly completed this vision on the “Mass Man” and “Mass Culture” was the television, in 80% of all households within 20 years of its demonstration at the World’s Fair in 1939. This is the inception of Mass Media, information is now shared through multiple platforms of media; books, newspaper, telegraph, radio, television and the natural evolution of the next great medium is simple, if  the natural progression from one to one communication is one to many then the next obvious progression is from many to many.

“New Media” is another term coined by our prophet Marshall McLuhan, defined as different from mass media because it is not interpersonal such as the telephone or handwritten letter while still interactive and somewhat participatory. Some scholars would argue that “break point” came much later with the invention of the computer and the internet, Professor of Communications and Media Studies Lance Strate of Fordham University would disagree, he argues “they are secondary developments, an that, more ofthen than not, the characteristics of the new media environment are derived from the characteristics of electricity, electric technology, and the electronic media in general.”