June 27, 2008
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Media is Magic
(For some reason this just struck me with force: Media is magic. It’s leverage. It’s the only possible way — the only possible way — for an individual, sans army or vast fortune, to touch the lives of more than a trivial number of people. We in the web-world tend to get a bit desensitized to the scale of our work, but whoah: Tens of thousands of people? Hundreds of thousands? That is a power unknown to generations past — again, except for the tyrants and tycoons. What good timing on our part!)
(Okay, back to work.)
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Comments
By "media" do you mean "the Internet"? Because I'd argue that any form of art has been, for generations and generations, a way for an individual, sans army or vast fortune, to touch the lives of more than a trivial number of people.
No, I definitely mean all media -- newspapers, pamphlets, folios, paintings, scrolls.
Media that's easy to copy and share is *way* better, I'd argue, but yeah, stone tablets, I'll take 'em.
Do you know what's awesome? For hundreds of years, people were misinterpreting cuneiform tablets, because they assumed that there was a horizontal syntax. Instead, for the most part the tablets were dual-entry logs registering inputs and outputs. Total bureaucratic stuff, perfect for documenting an empire.
Not us, though. Vernacular prose invective, low-res video, and pictures of our cats. Sumeria never had enough bandwidth for that.
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