June 27, 2008
| American Pendulum >>
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.)
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.