Download Writing on the Wall: Social Media: The First 2,000 Years AudioBook Free
Papyrus rolls and Twitter have much in common, as each was their generation's signature means of "instant" communication. Indeed, as Tom Standage uncovers in his scintillating new audiobook, interpersonal media is not a new trend. From the papyrus characters that Roman statesmen used to switch news across the Empire to the arrival of hand-printed tracts of the Reformation to the pamphlets that propagate propaganda through the American and French revolutions, Standage chronicles the increasingly superior ways people distributed information with one another, spontaneously and organically, down the generations. With the climb of papers in the nineteenth century, then radio and tv set, "mass mass media" consolidated control of information in the hands of a few moguls. However, the web has taken information sharing full circle, and the growing of information along internet sites has reemerged in powerful new ways. A fresh, provocative exploration of interpersonal mass media over two millennia, Writing on the Wall structure reminds us how modern behavior echoes that of prior generations - the Catholic Church, for example, confronted similar dilemmas in deciding whether or how to respond to Martin Luther's problems in the early sixteenth century to those that large companies confront today in responding to general population criticism on the web. Invoking the likes of Thomas Paine and Vinton Cerf, coinventor of the web, Standage explores themes or templates that have always been debated: the tension between freedom of appearance and censorship; whether interpersonal mass media trivializes, coarsens, or enhances general population discourse; and its role in spurring advancement, permitting self-promotion, and fomenting trend. As engaging as it is visionary, Writing on the Wall structure attracts on background to cast new light on today's interpersonal media and promotes debate and dialogue about how precisely we'll communicate in the future.
