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Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years Kindle Edition
Social media is anything but a new phenomenon. From the papyrus letters that Cicero and other Roman statesmen used to exchange news, to the hand-printed tracts of the Reformation and the pamphlets that spread propaganda during the American and French revolutions, the ways people shared information with their peers in the past are echoed in the present.
Standage reminds us how historical social networks have much in common with modern social media. The Catholic Church's dilemmas in responding to Martin Luther's attacks are similar to those of today's large institutions in responding to criticism on the Internet, for example, and seventeenth-century complaints about the distractions of coffeehouses mirror modern concerns about social media. Invoking figures from Thomas Paine to Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet, Standage explores themes that have long been debated, from the tension between freedom of expression and censorship to social media's role in spurring innovation and fomenting revolution. Writing on the Wall draws on history to cast provocative new light on today's social media and encourages debate and discussion about how we'll communicate in the future.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBloomsbury USA
- Publication dateOctober 15, 2013
- File size3867 KB
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About the Author
Tom Standage is technology editor at the Economist magazine and the author of The Turk, The Neptune File, and The Victorian Internet.
Product details
- ASIN : B00CIR9856
- Publisher : Bloomsbury USA; 1st edition (October 15, 2013)
- Publication date : October 15, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 3867 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 288 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,026,479 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #705 in Ancient Early Civilization History
- #854 in Computers & Technology (Kindle Store)
- #959 in Media Studies (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Tom Standage is deputy editor of The Economist, overseeing its strategy and output on digital platforms, including the web, apps, audio, video and social media. He joined The Economist in 1998 and previously served as Digital Editor, Business Affairs Editor, Business Editor, Technology Editor and Science Correspondent. He is a regular radio commentator and keynote speaker on technology trends, and takes a particular interest in the social and cultural impact of technology. Tom is also the author of six history books, including “Writing on the Wall: Social Media—The First 2,000 Years”; the New York Times bestsellers “A History of the World in Six Glasses” (2005) and “An Edible History of Humanity” (2009); and “The Victorian Internet” (1998), a history of the telegraph. His writing has appeared in other publications including the New York Times, the Guardian and Wired. He holds a degree in engineering and computer science from Oxford University, and is the least musical member of a musical family. He is married and lives in London with his wife and children.
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Writing on the Wall documents aspects of social interaction through the ages starting its first analysis with Roman Civilization. The author describes how messengers constantly delivered messages back and forth among the elite to keep each other abreast of the social and political spheres they operated within. The style was conversational and scribes for brevity had systems to efficiently condense common phrases to transcribe more efficiently. The author moves onto the origin of Protestantism with Martin Luther and the use of the printing press to disseminate information via pamphlet. The use of the printing press in spreading information was instrumental in igniting popular discontent with the corruption in the ecclesiastical system. The author discusses how in England poetry and clever and subtle rhymes were a means of earning a reputation and a source of creative outlet for the better educated. The author then discusses the role of the coffee house in the enlightenment and the migration from the social atmosphere of an ale house in which some of the darker aspects of social interaction happened to the coffee house facilitated lively debate and cross polination among intellectuals. The coffeehouse acted as a level playing field for all those who could afford the simple beveridge. The author moved on to the newspaper and how it spread throughout the US and provided for lively political commentary. The stamp tax catalysed a backlash from the media who would be directly affected and were an example of how again, the printing press was a strong force to enable dissemination of information. In the US having multiple points of view was applauded with the hope that the best explanations and reasons would be appreciated, in France papers were used as tools to attack ones enemies. The author shows how public media can be a force for informational dispersion as well as a force for creating chaos and paranoia. The author moves on to how the radio was used and the TV as well. The radio being more peer to peer initially as the cost of being a reciever and a transmitter is not particularly different but after specific incidents where individuals were seen to be interfering with state business, radio transmission went into a more regulated environment dominated by RCA (in the US) and BBC in the UK. The use of centralized media was instrumental in the spread of propoganda and controlling society (as in germany) as well as a medium to advertise, as in the US. The author then takes us into the modern world with the internet and the rebirth of peer to peer communication.
Writing on the Wall is a lively history of ways in which people have interacted through history. Peer to peer dominated social media interactions and marketing is becoming the norm again after a long period in which centralized media was the norm but in reading this work it is clear that this form of interaction has been the norm in the past as well. I enjoyed reading this, its definitely not all new- the ability to publish different points of view as a consequence of the printing press is pretty obvious to most, but the authors discussion of how that medium was used in different ways in different times gives good perspective. Definitely worth reading.
Here I'll simply say, if you're interested in history, or social networks, or freedom of the press, or freedom of the internet, or the history of social versus mass media, READ THIS BOOK. It's a winner.
I'm still going back over chapters in my copy.
Technology and means were a bit backward, to say the least, but nothing has changed much: a deserving "nihil novum sub sole" sort of thought.
These qualities justify my three stars and how I wished they were five!
Many things. however, are worthy of consideration by what they miss rather than by what they cover and this book is one of those cases.
Roger Vaillant, a French writer of the mid XXth century - and strangely a communist to make this comment - once coined the word "to Portugalize" to explain the fast decadence he felt both Britain and France were descending into.
His idea was that Portugal, the first global empire ever, had simultaneous got tired of of her past efforts and narrowed her collective views into herself, clean forgetting the World outside and thus missing the will to go beyond her century of glory.
This is very true of British social and historical review today. Standage's book covers extensively and very well what happened in England, particularly after the "printing revolution", treats American events as a sort of corollary and devotes a chapter each to momentous events elsewhere: the Roman Empire, the Reformation, the French Revolution, the birth of Nazism and use of radio, now the Arab spring and modern social networks.
China, Russia, Spanish, Mogul, Persian and so many others go by the wayside. Many had as much population and covered a wider area than the British Empire. And probably as much influence on "writing on the wall" as England ever did.
Nobody in his senses will deny that England had a lion's share in the development of "distribution" of thought as this is what the book is about. But not giving a simple thought on how Genghis Khan managed his internal politics at home while thousands of miles away or Spanish conquerors in South (or North) America kept abreast of court events in Madrid is a failing.
Obviously, one cannot cover everything and this is not my criticism: what is , is that this failure is commonplace in post-imperial Britain as it will be in post-hegemonical USA or was in post-navigational Portugal.
I have to make a strong exception to this general rule of Britain's cultural centrism to, say, Ann Wroe's "Perkin", that covers a subject of almost solely English interest with detailed outside world study. And her other books.
Tom Standage could improve a lot if he read her colleague's books (both work at the same place).
Maybe, next time, I'll add a star.
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Besonders dankenswert: Die Parellelen sozialer Medien der Vergangenheit zu jenen von heute lässt der Autor häufig für sich sprechen, der Leser darf sich selbst seinen Reim machen. Das hält beim Lesen munter. Erst im Epilog versucht der Autor sich an einer breiten Interpretation und Zusammenfassung. Die hat mich nicht so ganz befriedigt: Aus den offensichtlichen Parallelen abzuleiten, dass Social Media powered by Internet schlicht die flottere Fortsetzung der sozialen Medienlandschaft von gestern sei, scheint mir doch zu kurz gegriffen.
Die Analogien, die Tom Standage zwischen den Sozialen Medien von früher und heute herausgearbeitet hat, fand ich aufschlussreich. Die Unterschiede, die er nicht herausgearbeitet hat, fände ich nicht weniger spannend. Den Fortsetzungsband dazu würde ich jedenfalls lesen :- )
The author starts with pre-historic humans and their development as highly social animals. Our remote ancestors groomed each other for social cohesion. Later they developed language (and gossip ). The invention of writing allowed this social activity to be spread across place and time. The growth of literacy allowed social interaction to increase. Printing boosted the process. Now social media and the Internet in general have given it a further boost.
In the beginning were the Greeks, wavering between the spoken and written word. Then came the Romans. Roman patricians, most notably Cicero , were prolific exchangers of letters; their plebeian inferiors were prolific writers on walls. St Paul kept the embryonic Christian movement alive with his epistles (letters). Christianity triumphed, then ossified. Attempts at reform were at first unsuccessful. Then came printing and Martin Luther . The printing of Lutheran pamphlets was the new media and it went viral. Soon printing came to be seen as a threat not just to the Church but to the state. A reaction set in and severe regulation was imposed. For a while this was effective but control was lost during periods of social crisis such as the English Civil War and the American and French Revolutions. An important promoter of the pamphlets was the coffeehouse. There, along with pamphlets, could be found the newssheets and newspapers. These had small circulations and often relied on real and imaginary letters from their readers to fill up the space.
All this changed with the development of mass market media . Steam presses allowed newspapers to reduce their price and increase their circulation, but now advertising was a major part of their income. They delivered a product to consumers, delivering their readers to their advertisers. This was followed by broadcast radio and broadcast television . The Internet is now eroding this mass market, although perhaps not as we expected .
THIS BOOK has 250 pages spread across 11 chapters. There is a Notes section of 4 pages which, chapter by chapter, references entries in the 9 pages of the Sources. There is also an Index and a few black and white illustrations; for example: a Roman wax table used for writing short messages; the title page of an English Civil War pamphlet; the interior of a London coffeehouse; the cover of the New York Sun from 1833. The author is the digital editor of The Economist.






