Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

by Tom Standage

Papyrus rolls and Twitter have much in common, as each was their generation's signature means of “instant” communication. Indeed, as Tom Standage reveals in his scintillating new book, social media is anything but a new phenomenon.

From the papyrus letters that Roman statesmen used to exchange news across the Empire to the advent of hand-printed tracts of the Reformation to the pamphlets that spread propaganda during the American and French revolutions, Standage chronicles the increasingly sophisticated ways people shared information with each other, spontaneously and organically, down the centuries. With the rise of newspapers in the nineteenth century, then radio and television, “mass media” consolidated control of information in the hands of a few moguls. However, the Internet has brought information sharing full circle, and the spreading of news along social networks has reemerged in powerful new ways.

A fresh, provocative exploration of social media over two millennia, Writing on the Wall reminds us how modern behavior echoes that of prior centuries-the Catholic Church, for example, faced similar dilemmas in deciding whether or how to respond to Martin Luther's attacks in the early sixteenth century to those that large institutions confront today in responding to public criticism on the Internet. Invoking the likes of Thomas Paine and Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet, Standage explores themes that have long been the tension between freedom of expression and censorship; whether social media trivializes, coarsens or enhances public discourse; and its role in spurring innovation, enabling self-promotion, and fomenting revolution. As engaging as it is visionary, Writing on the Wall draws on history to cast new light on today's social media and encourages debate and discussion about how we'll communicate in the future.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Technology, Social Media, Audiobook, Science, Sociology

288 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 2013

About the author

Tom Standage is a journalist and author from England. A graduate of Oxford University, he has worked as a science and technology writer for The Guardian, as the business editor at The Economist, has been published in Wired, The New York Times, and The Daily Telegraph, and has published five books, including The Victorian Internet[1][2]. This book explores the historical development of the telegraph and the social ramifications associated with this development. Tom Standage also proposes that if Victorians from the 1800s were to be around today, they would be far from impressed with present Internet capabilities. This is because the development of the telegraph essentially mirrored the development of the Internet. Both technologies can be seen to have largely impacted the speed and transmission of information and both were widely criticised by some, due to their perceived negative consequences.

Standage has taken part in various key media events. He recently participated in ictQATAR's "Media Connected" forum for journalists in Qatar, where he discussed the concept of technology journalism around the world and how technology is expected to keep transforming the world of journalism in the Middle East and all around the world.

-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

At a time when one is almost ostracised for not being on at least one social media platform, Tom Standage has penned this most interesting of books. Many feel that social media is something that emerged over the last twenty years, gaining momentum with the ever-complex nature of Tweets, Likes, and even the odd Snap. However, if one looks through the annals of history, it is easy to find that social media in various forms has been around since humans sought to communicate in their basest forms. This is the premise of Standage’s book, which is sure to open the eyes of many readers and leave those who are not too addicted to their smartphones to take a look up from their screens. As Standage opens his tome, he explores why humans socialise and what it is about us that makes it essential. While his analysis of brain size and group activities is easy to comprehend, Standage extrapolates the argument and looks at the larger primate population. Social grooming is but one interesting example of how primates have long interacted with one another, though it is quite telling. It is a way to engage and help one another out. One might even say we share a particular ability by doing so.

From there, the book gets into its central arguments, looking as far back as the Romans. Standage explains that social media type interacting can be traced back effectively through the letter sharing done at the time, when writers who responded to missives would sometimes copy out the letter they sought to answer and share it amongst others. This was an early form of social interaction and sharing of sentiments, almost a ‘response to a post’ idea. This gradually continued in various forms, including in early Christianity, where this idea blossomed into creating a widespread religion by spreading ‘The Word’ along, through letters and, some of which were copied and left for others to read on their own. This early communication form helped pave the way to many other exciting means of communication and sharing of key ideas, while also embracing those who felt similarly.

One would be remiss not to look at the Gutenberg printing press as a major form of social communication. This allowed mass copying and distribution of ideas, rather than having to copy them out over and over. Gutenberg’s press went hand in hand with the rise of Martin Luther, who communicated his ideas against the Church effectively, beginning a (necessary?) conversation about the control and edicts that were being depicted at the time. Standage argues quite effectively that Luther was one of the early users of social media to drum up revolutionary fervour when it comes to ideas, though he was surely not the only one. Hand in hand with this is another topic, that being the censorship of ideas, which followed after people began expressing themselves in writing. England had a history in the 17th century of requiring a stamp of approval to publish anything, thereby having it checked before it could be released to the public. While this lack of press freedom may have created a stir, it does allow Standage to delve into the topic of how social interactions are not always factual, leaving some to wonder if this matters, in the larger scheme of things.

The evolution of the coffeehouse added much when it comes to social networking. Standage discusses at some length about how coffee and discussions seemed a natural pairing. In another of his books (and made reference to here), Standage argues that the arrival of coffee to Europe helped foster the academic spirit. Many key tenets of science and literature came out of coffeehouse encounters, including some of Newton’s most lasting scientific sentiments that still hold true today. People will gather over coffee to hash out ideas and come to some semblance of agreement (or even differ greatly), which helps promote the idea that coffee fosters social interactions and thereby is surely part of the larger social media progression.

I look to the news and see how things like #BlackLivesMatter are emerging with more intensity each and every day. Use of social media platforms help propel the movement forward , permitting people to share their sentiments and join the cause. Standage shows repeatedly that this push to revolution is not new, through pamphlets, tracts, and political books that played a role for centuries. To get people involved, things sometimes needed to be written down. To raise the ire of the masses, people needed to see things in front of them. While there were no cellular phones back in the 18th century, there were persuasive writers who could make their points and sway people to their side. Equally, there were those who denounced what was being done and wrote to critique the revolutionary movement. This banter, as well as being healthy, also fed the fires of debate and helped push the world towards new and exciting norms. Without them, Americans may still be sipping tea and searching for the best crumpets on the market. Seriously though, the back and forth of past writing helped shape the countries in which we live today and pushed for change when it was needed. While it may have been slower than many hoped, there was progress made... though some may wonder if we have regressed with the current criticisms being bandied about on current social media platforms!

The latter portion of the book handles the explosion of mass media and how this helped create a social collective or isolationist mentality. The birth of communication through broadly distributed newspapers, international correspondence by telegraph, and instant communication by radio (and eventually television) helped to develop new platforms for social interaction, or at least a connectivity that cannot be ignored. Standage takes things one step further with a thoroughly interesting chapter on the emergence of ‘online social media’ with the start of computer to computer conversations. This led to webpages, the internet, and soon the start of the international sandbox of communication. While the ‘info at a click’ movement has surely become the norm, Standage argues that it has helped the world see things in real time and pushed social movements into instant reactions, rather than needing to stir up the people with a fiery speech on the printed page.

While this is the fourth book of Tom Standage’s that I have read in just over a week (obsessed, perhaps?), I have taken away just as much with this piece as I did when he tackled issues in the other three. Building on some of the arguments made previously by scanning world history, Standage shows how humans can connect on many levels at different times in history. He effectively posits that human are social beings and that we are able to come together to share, even if we do not always agree. It is this ability to communicate that has helped create advancements and kept the history books interesting. Controversy has woven itself into the lives of all those who made a mark on the world, down to the lowliest 3am Tweet. While many people feel that social media is surely a new thing that they will never fully comprehend, Tom Standage steps in to remind us that it is only a new permutation of a long-understood concept. However and whenever you choose to put yourself out there to the world, you are making a difference. All this and so much more is found within the pages of this easy to digest tome, which offers as much information as you’d find in an academic textbook. Standage compresses things into a mere eleven chapters and makes great references to well-known historical events, as well as more modern happenings that shaped the world. A must-read for those who want to take a step back and learn a little something as they try to synthesise where things have come in the past decade or so. It’s not about making the world great again... it’s about rediscovering how great it has always been!

Kudos, Mr. Standage, for another amazing reading experience. I learn so much and find myself having fun as I do it, which is the best education of all!

Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

[Sherwood Smith]

Eminently readable, this book gives a thumbnail overview of the development of writing, then engagingly begins with Roman methods of social media, graffiti, scrolls, letters, codexes.

The author ties the evolution of these various social media to political developments, attempts at governmental censorship and control, technological breakthroughs, etc, and draws some interesting conclusions. Like how social media during the years of radio diminished because it was easier to control the means of technology (especially in Nazi Germany, where there was a deliberate program of total control of all information flow).

The problem is that it is spotty. For example, we get a full chapter on the coffee houses, but what about the salons? We hear about the Chinese government's sophisticated methods of controlling their internet, but what about China's long, LONG history of social media? What about India, Africa, Japan, etc?

I enjoyed the bits we did get--I'd never heard of the Devonshire Manuscript, for instance--but the idea could easily have extended to several volumes. I would cheerfully have read them all!

[Julian Douglass · Rating 4 out of 5]

For it being only 250 pages of text, this is one heavy and detailed book. A lot of good information about the media of the time and how many parallels there are from the different ages Mr. Standage covers to today. Always fascinating to learn about how different, and similar, media consumption is today as it was back then.

[Andreas Fetz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book that explores some of the ways that human have used social media of various sorts over the years. From ancient Rome to the birth of Facebook and tumblr, Tom Standage has done some really interesting research. It changed my perspective on one or two thing, most notably to contextualize mass media as a new development all things considered. The emergence of a more participatory and democratic media on the internet in some ways restores things to their traditional state. Only in the last hundred years or so has news traveled in such a non-participatory and top-down way. In ancient Rome, speeches, gossip, and news of current events were passed from person to person, with commentary added at various steps along the way in a fluid and dynamic manner. Having grown up in the age of three TV stations and the associated press, it was interesting to think about aspects of new media as revitalizing the traditions of old old media in ways that I never considered.
The only thing I will say is that it is very European focused. I suppose that give the book a nice thread to follow, but I would have loved to know about communication customs and developments in other parts of the world too. How did news travel through networks in other parts of the world. I suppose you can't get everything, but it felt like there was lots left that could be explored. I suppose that is now for me to go and do :)

[Atila Iamarino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adorei a abordagem do livro de comparar meios passados com os atuais. Melhor ainda, ele fala sobre antes da mídia impressa – embora seja mais um restrito à cultura ocidental. A comparação entre as redes sociais de cartas, notas e poemas com as redes sociais atuais é muito boa. Eu nunca tinha pensado em como o novo são as mídias em massa, com o monopólio da informação, e não mídias pulverizadas com pessoas influentes (no sentido de que falam com muitas outras). Outro ponto muito bom é a comparação do começo dos jornais com o começo do rádio e da TV, a eliminação da participação social e o controle por grandes mídias, que deve acontecer com YT e similares daqui para frente. Excelente para entender o momento atual.

[Jeff Swystun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having loved the author’s A History of the World in 6 Glasses, I looked forward to him proving a theory that has many believers. The basic premise is social media is a return to way things used to be. This argument suggests that our ancestors knew how to communicate one-to-one and one-to-many with meaning. Then 19th and 20th Century mass media bunged this all up with its huge and overwhelming broadcast capabilities. This machine pelted people with messages without asking if they wanted them or if they ever provided any value.

Many now believe that social media has democratized media and communications. This I believe is largely untrue. For a short time, in the early 2000’s, social media may have delivered on the promise of conversation but it missed the opportunity. All too quickly it became big business and fell into the hands of traditional marketers, advertisers and media professionals who were only comfortable with what they knew best and that is control. As a result, social media is now little different from radio, print and television.

It is blaringly loud, aggravatingly intrusive, and only episodically relevant. It is a channel of communication that flows one way like a fire hose. People are tricked into believing their posts, tweets and likes give them power. In reality, they are pinging and sharing what a small handful of people want them to. It is more "what you get is what you share" than "what you share is what you get".

Social media is a parlor trick. It only gives the appearance of being highly personal and individualized. What could have been “the masses’ media” is mass media plain and simple.

This is a big miss in the book as is the lack of commentary around content. Standage talks of means of communications but not substance. Were The Reformation and Arab Spring a result of media or the arguments they advanced? Obviously, both are to be credited but I did not get the sense the author placed the same weight. I am not sure how to credit this given his role at The Economist.

Writing on the Wall is incredibly well researched but I glazed and passed over several parts starting with the analysis into primate behavior and discussions of how the neocortex works. I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter on poetry as a means of social media. This was original and fun. Though London and Paris’ coffee houses have been referenced a great deal recently to explain democratic communication and idea dissemination, Standage covers them in a human and fresh way. I, too, am referencing them in an upcoming book so hope people do not tire of the subject.

Though the titling throughout was clever: “New Post from Martin Luther” and “The Facebook of the Tudor Court”, Writing on the Wall is really quite dense and linear. Standage does a fine job of convincing one that there are clear antecedents in our history of social media but falls short of relating them to present day. There is lineage but no meaningful connection. After the first three chapters it grew repetitive and laborious.

It would have flowed better if the linkage or message was, “progress is threatening”. He provides such examples as Greeks being suspicious of the printed word over the spoken. Socrates believed that writing undermined the need to remember things and so weakens the mind. The same complaint is made today of Google and spellcheck. That may have perked it up. In summary, the premise is supportable, the history is there but the relevance fell short. Still it contributed to the discussion and readers who want similar efforts can look to:

Nothing New: An Irreverent History of Storytelling and Social Media by Muhammad Yasin, Ryan Brock

Histories of Social Media by Jonathan Salem Baskin

Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet by Asa Briggs and Peter Burke

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Social media plays a key role in both my personal and professional communications. I tweet to friends, family, and those who buy the products manufactured at the company where I work. I blog about the books I’ve read as well as the back stories of people and events in the books I’ve written. Because I wasn’t doing all of this fifteen years ago, I assumed that social media was a modern phenomenon.

In The Writing on the Wall: Social Media - the First 2,000 Years Tom Standage proves me wrong.

Peer to peer communication has been a core element in human society since the evolution of the spoken and written word. What’s actually changed is the technology used to convey messages. The Romans used papyrus rolls and wax tablets whose appearance foretold the iPad. The spread of Christianity was facilitated by the viral-style recopying and distribution of letters written by the apostles. King Henry VIII’s court had the Devonshire Manuscript, a written collection of poems, messages, and lamentations that spread news and gossip as effectively as Facebook does today. Seventeenth century coffee houses were meeting places that fostered future revolutions. The coming of the Internet switched the discourse medium from pen and paper to keypad and screen.

The Writing on the Wall is an entertaining and enlightening look at how our past communication methods became our present ones and will inspire our future discourses. Tom Standage has shown that the term ‘social media’ may be new, but the concept and application are as old as mankind.

[Jeremy Langett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tom Standage offers a clear and concise history of media as a social activity stemming from the birth of writing in 3400 BC to contemporary platforms enabling content sharing, judging and analyzing in all of its forms. While the argument that social media actually maintain a long and storied history is developed, the implications for the different types of media on human civilization are crammed into the epilogue, which is probably the most fascinating section of the book. Fans of Sherry Turkle, Maryanne Wolfe and others who carefully examine the way contemporary media have inhabited - or overtaken - the majority of our lives may be disappointed in such a short commentary. However, the book is well worth a read just to uncover some of the historical roots of social media that are often taken for granted.

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was in college, the social networking site JuicyCampus briefly expanded to my university. It was a forum anyone could sign up for and remain anonymous, and after an extremely short period of sincere posting about the state of campus life, it predictably settled on a stable equilibrium of posts questioning the heterosexuality of selected guys, impugning the sexual virtues of selected girls, rants about foreign students, poorly spelled boasting, and several other forms of high-minded discourse typically associated with YouTube comments. For several months, it was common to hear all sorts of conspiracy theories and rumors as to who certain individuals were and discuss the drama for extended stretches. Eventually the site shut down and everyone moved on, but given a completely free, open, uncensored, anonymous platform to communicate, based on some of the most complex technology in history, able to say whatever they wanted, human beings legally capable of signing up to sacrifice their lives in the service of their country chose to type the equivalent of bathroom stall graffiti at each other. It was hilarious.

Standage's latest work does a lot to place that college experience in context, tracing the history of social media back to the ancient Sumerians and usefully separating the concepts of human socializing from the technologies that are used to enable it. Now, I personally love social media. I use it every day for all sorts of things - discussing what's going on with my life with people I can't necessarily see often, scheduling meetups, recommending news items, discussing books and music and movies, organize politically, and sending stupid pictures with my friends. I read a lot of curmudgeonly arguments about the effects of social media in the news (ironically, frequently on blogs), and Standage has a great list of questions he's exploring in the Introduction that touch on those points:

"Have new forms of social media led to a trivialization of public discourse? How should those in authority respond when they face criticism in social media? Does social media inherently promote freedom and democracy? What is the role of social media, if any, in triggering revolutions? Is it a distracting waste of time that prevents people doing useful work? Is the use of social media actually antisocial, as online connections displace real-world interaction? Is social media just a fad that can be ignored?"

He begins with the banal yet still underappreciated fact that humans are social animals, and how as such we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to flatter, seduce, befriend, bargain, quarrel, and otherwise interact with each other. Much like with grooming and primates, social messages and experiences help to form bonds and advance us in our lives, and so any technology that allows people to communicate with each other - be they clay tablets, sheets of papyrus, wax tablets, plaster walls, codexes, parchment scrolls, libels, pamphlets, newsletters, corantos, newspapers, the telegraph, wireless radio, television, email, websites, blogs, or modern social networking sites - will be eagerly embraced to the extent that it helps them do those things cheaply, easily, and effectively.

Following his discussion of the biological basis for our compulsion to communicate, he moves into brief but illuminating histories of all of those communication methods. Though some of the sections are cribbed somewhat from his earlier works (the section on coffeehouses from the equivalent section on coffee from The World in Six Glasses, the section on the telegraph from The Victorian Internet), all are filled with fascinating little insights. For example, several ancient civilizations deliberately used inefficient cuneiform or pictogram writing systems to keep literacy out of the hands of the masses and thereby entrench themselves as an elite. In an amusing historical irony, Plato's Phaedrus has a long rant in it devoted to the evils of writing:

"Enough of the art of speaking; let us now proceed to consider the true use of writing. There is an old Egyptian tale of Theuth, the inventor of writing, showing his invention to the god Thamus, who told him that he would only spoil men's memories and take away their understandings. From this tale, of which young Athens will probably make fun, may be gathered the lesson that writing is inferior to speech. For it is like a picture, which can give no answer to a question, and has only a deceitful likeness of a living creature. It has no power of adaptation, but uses the same words for all. It is not a legitimate son of knowledge, but a bastard, and when an attack is made upon this bastard neither parent nor any one else is there to defend it. The husbandman will not seriously incline to sow his seed in such a hot-bed or garden of Adonis; he will rather sow in the natural soil of the human soul which has depth of earth; and he will anticipate the inner growth of the mind, by writing only, if at all, as a remedy against old age. The natural process will be far nobler, and will bring forth fruit in the minds of others as well as in his own."

Of course, the only reason this dialogue survives at all instead of countless other ancient works is because it was written down, where it has inspired far more thought and discussion than if it had been confined to the faulty memories of a few present at the Academy when it was written. The famed Roman orator Cicero demanded constant reports of news and rumors from Rome while away in his villa or when stationed in the provinces, while his contemporary Seneca made fun of people who feasted on idle gossip. Julius Caesar may have become the first actual publisher in history when he ordered the proceedings of the Senate, the acta diurna, to be disseminated amongst the people so that his prestige would increase. Cicero had the idea for movable type in the 1st century BC, but slaves, who were used to take dictation and send messages, were so cheap that no one followed him up on the idea (there's perhaps a broader lesson there on the damaging effects that reliance on slave power has for a society's ability to innovate, as well as on the idea that communications can be democratized, but other methods of hierarchy can be established on top quite easily). The Romans frequently used abbreviations that will be familiar to anyone who texts, e.g. SPD for "salutem plurinam dicit" or "sends many greetings", or SVBEEV for "si vales bene est ego valeo" or "if you're well that's good; I'm well".

Standage draws an analogy between the way that Martin Luther engaged his Catholic opponents and coordinated with his allies during the Reformation using much cheaper methods of publishing than his enemies and the way that residents of several of the Arab Spring countries used Facebook to coordinate with each other during their uprisings. To my mind it's almost meaningless to credit Facebook in and of itself for enabling revolution; after all, 99% of all revolutions throughout history have been enabled without that website. However, it's worth asking ourselves to what extent we depend on specific media for certain things. Did the intellectual ferment present in European coffeehouses, as the next section discusses, derive its sole basis from the atmosphere? Would specific discoveries, inventions, or other progress such as the foundation of the London Stock Exchange or Lloyd's insurance company not have occurred without them? It's like when people credit an idea to something they found on Pintrest, which is merely an aggregator. There's probably not a right or wrong answer to that question, and I believe both that proclamations of "Revolution 2.0" (or really anything "2.0") are overblown, and also that saying that those technologies had no role whatsoever are incorrect.

The modern era is where it's even easier to see parallels with our modern world. Much like with Martin Luther, Thomas Paine had enormous success spreading his message of revolution using cheap pamphlets, becoming for a time the biggest-selling author in the world. Attempts to censor dissenting public writings by the British and also the French monarchies were futile and ultimately counterproductive, which is why the People's Republic of China's similar efforts with their Golden Shield in all likelihood will have to give way eventually. Note that "eventually" can be a long time, and though savvy people can easily get around the Great Firewall by using VPNs and such methods, the majority of citizens could be trapped in an AOL-ish walled garden for quite some time. This tension between democratic and authoritarian media is also played out in the technologies that became popular in the early 20th century, namely wireless radio and television. While wireless started out fairly laissez faire, after amateur operators interfered with the Titanic's radio communications before it sank the current system of licensing and regulation began. In contrast, television started off as an oligopoly from the start thanks to corporate lobbying for the VHF model instead of the UHF model, ensuring that instead of many small broadcasters there would only be three large ones for several decades. Even to this day the public broadcast spectrum is heavily regulated, so while in theory anyone could communicate over this medium, in practice visual communication like that has had to wait for the age of YouTube. It's another argument to add to Neil Postman's jeremiad against television in Amusing Ourselves to Death.

The web is where communication could possibly be becoming more democratic again, though there are important caveats. While often platforms like Twitter are privately owned, individual communication is relatively open and free (if often monetized), and vendor lock-in has not yet become such a problem that it's impossible to start new services and alternatives. Social networking sites are even being embraced by large employers as a way to enable employee collaboration, even if they also use those tools to potentially keep tabs on them. Countless people use social media every day to keep relationships going that would be vastly more difficult without them, and if most communication seems trivial, perhaps the real answer is that people are often trivial. The ultimate moral is familiar, that communications technologies are ultimately what we make of them, and can be used for good or evil depending on how they're structured and who the gatekeepers are. While there are many differences in the way that we use modern social media - the Romans didn't have Snapchat, take that losers! - the similarities are really interesting, and valuable perspective whenever you hear someone complain about Facebook or how much people text. You really can learn a lot about the present from studying the past, which is why eventually you understand that sites like JuicyCampus do nothing more than bring out our inner Romans scrawling on the wall of some public building about how our ex-girlfriends are whores, who gave us what STD, or where to go for a good time. Human nature is endlessly entertaining no matter which century you're in or what medium you're viewing it with.

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Literally what the title says it is, Standage brings his A-game to instructing about the historical significance of communication through the ages as a juxtaposition and comparison to the social media of today. Skeptics always doubted the newest phase of communication as something horrid, but then it becomes accepted and then used and in some cases altered for another purpose.

The research is evident and Standage has an easy way of sharing the information. Elements of each chapter and period can be used in the classroom or filed away or thought about in a way that's fruitful discussion about how humans interact (and in Standage's case showcases how all of it is about and related to gossip). I was particularly interested in the dawn of coffeehouses and how it spread information which he had mentioned in his other book about the history of the world in six glasses.

Unique and informative, as always and he mentions another of my favorite authors- Sherry Turkle.

[Three · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for my mass communication class- found the decentralized network of communication in the roman empire standage describes really interesting, & the subsequent focus on freedom of the press a little disappointing (ended up writing my paper on the rome chapter entirely- admittedly, i did skim the second half of the book due to a diagnosis of rapid onset deadlines/finals, lol)

[Maaike van Stratum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eens te meer blijkt er niets nieuws onder de zon. In de zeventiende eeuw werd er al geklaagd dat elke idioot zijn mening tegenwoordig maar kon laten drukken, en bij de oude Romeinen werd de draak gestoken met nieuwsjunkies die elke week naar de haven rende om te kijken of er post was.
En boeiende en amusante geschiedenis van de media, die eeuwenlang sociaal was, pas een krappe anderhalve eeuw onder de noemer massamedia valt, en nu weer sociaal. Of nou ja, in 2013 dan, er zal misschien alweer een nieuw hoofdstuk te schrijven zijn.
De eerste hoofdstukken waren het boeiendst, omdat ik daar nu eenmaal het minste van af wist: Romeinse brievennetwerken, Engelse 16eheeuwse roddelboeken, Franse pre-revolutionaire spotliedjes, fascinerend allemaal.

[Anna Porter Maddox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an assigned book for my Advanced Comm Theory class, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! History is so cool.

[Lissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating, fact-packed book on the social sharing and spread of ideas through the written word. There is a great deal of detail- some might find it a bit much, but the research is clearly very thorough. I learned some fascinating things about history along the way!

[Luis Brudna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alguns capítulos ficaram excessivamente longos e repetitivos.
No geral é um bom livro para perceber a existência e influências das redes sociais em vários momentos da história.
Gostei mais do livro "The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's Online Pioneers" do mesmo autor.
(li o livro em inglês)

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, social media, the darling demon of the modern age, a uniquely modern phenomenon - or is it?

The author of The Writing on the Wall suggests that social media, in its modern form, is but a new manifestation of an enduring form of populist information flow that has existed in many forms throughout the ages. Social media, he argues, is actually a return to the pre-broadcast era of radio and TV (which are mass media, a one-way broadcast to many, rather than a dynamic converwsation with many contributors that is ever-evolving).

It’s not terribly surprising, really. The larger the social group size of a species, the larger the neocortex in their brain - and humans’ neocortex is vastly larger than that of othe primates, suggesting we are wired for enormous social groups. In other words, our brains are, and have long been, literally wired for social networking.

The author makes a compelling case, citing to, for example:

(1) Ancient Rome.

Letters were often passed around to others, then annotated, quoted, and otherwise reproduced or published, not unlike reposting. They even contained abbreviations that look exactly like text speak (e.g. “BTW” “LMAO” “IMO” “FWIW”) - e.g. SPD (in Latin, salutem plurimam dicit or “sends many greetings”), or SVBEEV (si vales, bene est, ego valeo or in English, “if you are well, that is good, I am well”).

Likewise, Roman graffiti, such as those preserved in Pompeii, function very much like social media - the graffiti was made by nearly anyone who could read or write, and ranged from political endorsements (or mudslinging) to group event announcements, to apartment rental advertisements, to dirty humour. There are even graffiti that seem to function exactly like modern Facebook status updates, e.g.:

At Nuceria, I won 8,552 denarrii by gaming - fair play!

On April 19, I made bread. On April 20, I gave a cloak to be washed.

The man I am having dinner with is a barbarian.

Atimetus got me pregnant.

There are also quotes and aphorisms, not unlike the inspirational quotes often circulated on Facebook:

“A small problem gets larger if you ignore it!”

“Nobody is gallant unless he has loved.”

And there are some, directed at particular recipients, that mimic Facebook “wall posts” or Twitter @-ing:

“Samiuys to Cornelius: go hang yourself”

“Virgula to her friend Tertius: you are disgusting!”

“Gaius Sabinus says a fond hello to Statius.”

There are other examples where various residents of a building, or their visitors, seem to be replying to one another in long exchanges, rather like a comment thread on Facebook.

(2) Martin Luther.

Luther’s “post” went unexpectedly viral, as many do in the modern age. Luther posted his 95 Thesus, a single copy, on a single church door - but it caused such a stir that it was copied, circulated, translated, referenced, quoted and re-quoted endlessly around Europe.

(3) Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

Paine’s little pamphlet, Common Sense, was - like Luther’s 95 Thesus - a viral hit. It was a major contributor to the sparking of the American Revolution, as it coalesced the thoughts and emotions of the American people into a single motivating place - not unlike the way Facebook functioned to spark the Arab Spring and other modern revolutions.

~Final Thoughts~

As the author cleverly puts it, the more you look into this, the more it seems that history truly “retweets” itself.

Of course, it’s not exactly the same, the author concedes - modern social media, unlike its predecessors, is “instant, global, permanent, and searchable” - but it remains true that “in their underlying social mechanisms, the reactions they provoked, and the impact they had on society,” they are in many ways the same. It’s an interesting concept, to be sure. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

[Emily Willis]

I like Tom Standage’s books because he uses a specific idea to explore history (with a definite bias towards western history) instead of trying to tackle the whole thing or using the more traditional narrative of powerful people. If I’d fulfilled my childhood dream of being a history professor, I would use his books to teach world history courses.

I preferred the History of the World in Six Glasses to this book, but this was an interesting take on historical and modern communication. It’s also a good reminder that all communication “progress” (from pamphlets to radios) has been accompanied by criticisms that it is distracting, changing interpersonal relationships, etc. I would be interested to know whether Standage’s perspective has changed given things like Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation and the current state of affairs in America where misinformation is winning the day.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love histories of food, drink and life and as a writer and communications professional I was excited to read this book on the history of social media.

The biggest wow, which many don't know or forget: mass media of newspapers etc only dominated life from around 1800-2000. Before that most of how people communicated was through letters, articles, comments that were spread through a community or communities, much like social media works today.

So social media isn't "new media," it's just going back to the old, old media of yesteryear.

If you are interested in how people have communicated and shared ideas throughout the ages, this book is for you.

[sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read this for a class and really enjoyed it!

[Gu Kun · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most disappointing academic babble. Disappointing, because of his excellent An Edible History of Humanity. DNF

[Rick Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave it four stars because that was how much I liked it the first time. Was still interesting rereading it after a couple of years, but not as good. I do think the author makes a very good case that the "new media" has a lot in common with "old old media" and that the mass media era was an unusual period and more social communication was the norm.

It was interesting hearing about the problems that occurred in earlier times because they seem so similar to what we are dealing with today. Reading about people complaining about circulating pamphlets containing lies and slanders sounds a lot like the memes going around before the last election. It makes me think we can look to history to find ways to filter out the noise without censoring any truth.

[Thom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tom Standage compares the modern world to the historical, exploring the many parallels. This book looks at self publishing, from letters to pamphlets to blogs, each used as a force for social change in time. Each is also used for propaganda - fake news.

Various sections look at social media in various historical times, drawing parallels with today. One section (on the telegraph) returns to the subject of his first book - The Victorian Internet. This is just one cord in the net work of this historical survey, which I found quite interesting. In many ways, this history reminds me of Connections and The Day the Universe Changed by James Burke.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Standage makes the intriguing claim that new media is in fact very, very old media. That is, with the exception of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, during which we had an exceptional emphasis on mass media, our media has generally been focused on the social--people sharing things among each other, and things becoming virally popular among them.

Standage starts his evidence with tales from Rome and how messages were passed along in the ancient city. Most specifically, he writes of Cicero, who was a known letter writer. Within Rome, men of higher class, like Cicero, had a network for postal carriers who would carry messages to and from others, many times a day. When traveling afar, there were other means of carrying messages to and from Rome, via soldiers, sailors, and officials. Cicero always wanted to be in the know and pressed his friends to send him news of state while he was gone. In Rome itself, he passed on messages to others, copying parts of other messages he thought interesting, telling others to share his messages. This was not unlike Facebook in a sense, with popular ideas and messages being shared among friends and friends of friends, with some going "viral."

Books were passed along in a similar manner. Since one had to write out the book, there being no press, people would copy out books or passages of books they most liked. A few who could afford it might buy a book that had been copied out by slaves who often served as scribes. To get a book into circulation, writers often dedicated their works to patrons who had libraries from which they lent out to others. This was a way to get into such people's good graces.

Writing a book itself often involved a couple of drafts. Sometimes portions of a work in progress might be shared with close friends with an understanding that that draft was not to be passed on to others.

There was even a Roman "newspaper." This singular document was written out and posted in a public place each day. People could come and read it and copy out passages that they found of interest, which they then included in messages to others. We have no copies of the paper itself, but we have passages that were copied from the paper.

Christians used letter writing to pass along messages also, as is evident from the New Testament, the majority of which is made up of letters. These letters were shared with other churches and people--and were expected to be.

Next, Standage drops into the Reformation and looks at how Luther's message went viral. By that time, of course, there was a printing press. This meant ideas could be spread faster and more easily--but they were still not reproduced in a fast manner. A press might make two hundred copies of something in a day. Phamplets were printed and shared.

From here, Standage looks at the royal court of Britain in the seventeenth century. Knowing the power of print, governments put limitations on who could print and what could be printed. Printers often had to have licenses or get government approval for what they put into circulation. Special taxes also often applied. There was no shortage of people who tried to skirt these laws.

But what this also meant was that people also continued to pass along messages by hand, as in the royal court, where people imprisoned by Henry VIII kept a kind of public journal of sorts, writing out verses for one another--sometimes their own, sometimes those of others. In fact, poetry was, it seems, a kind of private affair. We think of Donne and others writing for a large audience, when in fact it was written for a few friends, friends who then ended up sharing those poems among their friends, much of this by hand.

Another innovation was the coffeehouse. In it, people gathered to discuss issues of the day. When it first became popular, such houses often focused on one kind of person--sailors, officials, intellectuals. Thus, some people held office hours there, and meetings took place there, allowing for the free exchange of information. It was via such a house we get our learned societies, and by them that we get our scholarly journal publishing. A society of scientists thought it a good idea to gather said information into a document to be shared among such thinkers. Only the best was to be included, meaning that they would review each others work before putting it in to print. Some knew others overseas and, with peer review, got those other Europeans into the publication. Such made me think a bit about scholarly publishing today, about how it costs so much and how one has to pay for it. There's much bandied about about open access, but even this has costs. Still, much of our practice goes back to these older times and to the need to print. I do think there are other models that could be used, models that might still cost ten thousand dollars or so to put out a quality product but that would be cheaper and more effective than our current system.

Finally, Standage gets to mass media. Around the early 1800s, steam printing allowed for a much faster process. Instead of a mere couple hundred copies a day, printers could now turn out a thousand or more copies. Most newspapers still printed for a very small audience, charging exorbitant prices of a half days' wage or so, but the New York Sun decided on a different model. It would print vast quantities and sell the paper for cheap. How would it recoup money? It would sell ads. Mass media was born.

Whereas newspapers earlier had largely been full of letters to and from people and material from other papers, things printers found of interest, the new mass market paper needed more info to include, so it hired reporters to go out and gather stories.

From here, we then move to radio and television. Radio started out as social, with people exchanging messages back and forth, but it became a one-way medium soon after the Titanic disaster. Radio was used for emergencies, and so many amateurs clogged the wires that it was hard for government messages to get through. In the case of the Titanic, amateurs were blamed for the message about ice not getting through to the ship (the real case, however, was that the ship had told another ship to quit sending messages to it because there were too many messages the Titanic itself was trying to send out for its passengers on board).

NBC/RCA took an early lead in gathering together a bundle of radio stations to forge a network. The fledgling CBS did similarly. When TV came about, NBC used its special interest clout with Congress to keep small stations from being able to compete or be formed, pushing out some early upstarts that would have provided competition, meaning that TV became almost wholly national in scope. In Britain, the government took an active role in forging media, with its BBC--there, individual licenses paid for the programming, which was to be for the "betterment" of the citizens. In America, the ad model form newspapers became the means by which money was made. Social media was no longer.

Until the Net, which Standage then goes into the history of.

But to some extent this is a bit of a broken argument, even if a neat one. For one, people never stopped sending letters or copying them out. Social media did not disappear during the TV era. And for two, the ideas that caught on were often those from the rich and the elite, even in the eras before mass media. After all, it was those who had power and money who were most able to spread their message, whether via TV or via a handwritten book. Similarly today, even with Facebook and the like, it is those with large platforms who have a larger role in shaping the discourse, and the larger platforms often belong to the elite. This isn't to say that a regular joe's message doesn't go viral at times, but it is to say that those who already have power more often have the likelihood of going viral.

[Sadie Sandoz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tom Standage’s Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years explores a time when one is almost ostracized for not being on at least one social media platform. Many feel that social media is something that emerged over the last twenty years, gaining momentum with the ever-complex nature of Tweets, and Likes. However, if one looks through the annals of history, it is easy to find that social media in various forms has been around since humans sought to communicate in their basest forms. This is the premise of Standage’s book, which is sure to open the eyes of many readers and leave those who are not too addicted to their smartphones to take a look up from their screens. “Such a social-media environment; it is merely the most recent and most efficient way that humans have found to scratch a prehistoric itch. The compelling nature of social media, then, can be traced back in part to the evolution of the social brain”(pg.8). Standage explores why humans socialize and what it is about us that makes it essential. While his analysis of brain size and group activities is easy to comprehend, Standage extrapolates the argument and looks at the larger primate population. Social grooming is but one interesting example of how primates have long interacted with one another, though it is quite telling. It is a way to engage and help one another out. One might even say we share a particular ability by doing so.

From there, the book gets into its central arguments, looking as far back as the Romans. Explaining that social media is a type of interaction that can be traced back effectively through the letter sharing done at the time when writers who responded to missives would sometimes copy out the letter they sought to answer and share it amongst others. This was an early form of social interaction and sharing of sentiments, almost a response to a post idea. This gradually continued in various forms, including in early Christianity, where this idea blossomed into creating a widespread religion by spreading ‘The Word’ along, through letters, some of which were copied and left for others to read on their own. This early communication form helped pave the way for many other exciting means of communication and sharing of key ideas, while also embracing those who felt similarly.

The evolution of the coffeehouse added much when it comes to social networking. Standage discusses at some length how coffee and discussions seemed a natural pairing. In another of his books, Standage argues that the arrival of coffee in Europe helped foster the academic spirit. He says, “On balance, the introduction of coffee houses did far more good than harm, which should give those concerned about the time-wasting potential of Internet-based social platforms pause for thought”(pg.117). Many key tenets of science and literature came out of coffeehouse encounters, including some of Newton’s most lasting scientific sentiments that still hold true today. People will gather over coffee to hash out ideas and come to some semblance of agreement, which helps promote the idea that coffee fosters social interactions and thereby is surely part of the larger social media progression.

Although, I look to the news and see how things like #BlackLivesMatter is emerging with more intensity each and every day. The use of social media platforms helps propel the movement forward, permitting people to share their sentiments and join the cause. Standage shows repeatedly that this push for revolution is not new, through pamphlets, tracts, and political books that played a role for centuries. To get people involved, things sometimes need to be written down. To raise the ire of the masses, people needed to see things in front of them. While there were no cellular phones back in the 18th century, there were persuasive writers who could make their points and sway people to their side. Equally, there were those who denounced what was being done and wrote to critique the revolutionary movement. This banter, as well as being healthy, also fed the fires of debate and helped push the world towards new and exciting norms. Without them, Americans may still be sipping tea and searching for the best crumpets on the market. Seriously though, the back and forth of past writing helped shape the countries in which we live today and pushed for change when it was needed. While it may have been slower than many hoped, there was progress made though some may wonder if we have regressed with the current criticisms being bandied about on current social media platforms.

The latter portion of the book handles the explosion of mass media and how this helped create a social collective or isolationist mentality. The birth of communication through broadly distributed newspapers, international correspondence by telegraph, and instant communication by radio and eventually television helped to develop new platforms for social interaction, or at least a connectivity that cannot be ignored. Standage takes things one step further with a thoroughly interesting chapter on the emergence of online social media with the start of the computer to computer conversations. This led to web pages, the internet, and soon the start of the international sandbox of communication. While the ‘info at a click’ movement has surely become the norm, Standage argues that it has helped the world see things in real-time and pushed social movements into instant reactions, rather than needing to stir up the people with a fiery speech on the printed page. In The elements of journalism, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel talk about the steps for creating truthful and trustworthy news that is accepted by the public. News is a way for the public to navigate society, therefore they emphasized the importance of creating truthful spaces for citizens to gather their information about the world with the explosion of mass media.

Building on some of the arguments made previously by scanning world history, Standage shows how humans can connect on many levels at different times in history. He effectively posits that humans are social beings and that we are able to come together to share, even if we do not always agree. It is this ability to communicate that has helped create advancements and kept the history books interesting. Bergstrom and West in Calling bullshit: the art of skepticism in a data-driven world, discuss how people utilize evidence of an association between two things to try to prove how one is responsible for causing the other. And that social media is giving a platform to allow people to spew and spin all sorts of misrepresentations. It's very easy to share data that supports your perspective without doing a deeper dive into if it's actually an accurate sample. I think this type of trust is lending itself well to the spread of political misinformation online. Controversy has woven itself into the lives of all those who made a mark on the world, down to the lowliest 3 am Tweet. While many people feel that social media is surely a new thing that they will never fully comprehend, Tom Standage steps in to remind us that it is only a new permutation of a long-understood concept. However and whenever you choose to put yourself out there to the world, you are making a difference. Standage compresses things into a mere eleven chapters and makes great references to well-known historical events, as well as more modern happenings that shaped the world. It’s not about making the world great again, it’s about rediscovering how great it has always been.

[Adrienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed Standage’s TED talk on the subject of this book. If you don’t have time to read the book, the video is a decent miniature of the thesis. The video left me wanting more, however, so I borrowed this one from the library, and I’m glad I did. It is an extremely condensed history of Western civilization on matters of literacy, print, and media. Standage argues that social media, rather than being a new idea, is in fact a very old one and gives voluminous examples to prove his point.

My critique would beg for more connections between the historical material and his thesis. The chapters are formatted in this way: brief introduction into why this historical period is relevant to the thesis, long detailed apparently very scholarly set-up of the historical period and its happenings, then ending with one or two short paragraphs relating it back to the thesis. It seemed like a freshman’s first paper.

In the middle of most chapters, I found myself wondering why these details mattered in the larger schema, and at the end of each chapters, with such a small amount of space dedicated to building those connections, I felt cheated out of the mature conversation that could – and probably should – have grown out of the material. I cannot decide whether he has not formulated the connections, whether they are fewer than he hoped, or whether he is leaving the reader to their own devices in how social media is relevant to today’s work.

Regardless, I enjoyed the journey that Standage takes the reader on, especially the larger context of history he has given me. His thesis is timely and should be heard as it presents the optimistic view that social media is not the death of society nor a deviation from the way things "ought" to be, but rather the return to a way of communicating we humans have used for centuries. History tells us that, in the use and expansion of social communication, lies man's progress.

I would recommend this to history buffs and media enthusiasts. While his topic is excellent, I think he would lose common readers in the middle.

[Robert Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book traces the origin of social media from the first century to the present day. Most of the book focuses on ancient forms of social communication including the use of "papyrus rolls" (plant material)or parchment surfaces (animal skins) and the eventual development of newer conveyance devices such as Morse Code, radio and television. It is not until the end of the book that the author addresses our current and most prevalent methods of communicating such as Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc. The theme of the book is that social media is nothing new and the premise of communication- the passing of information from one person to another along social connections has remained constant- rather, it is only the method of communicating that has changed. Moreover, the author notes that some original objections to the written sharing of such information, from Socrates and Plato's beliefs about the superiority of speech over writing (writing undermines the need to remember things and weakens the mind)to some current criticisms that participation in writing on Facebook and other similar venues, "is a distracting waste of time" that diverts people from more worthwhile pursuits such as work and study, haven't changed over history. When contrasted with the benefits of engaging in such practices, such as the development of closer connections to acquaintances and relatives, it appears that the author believes this is all a good thing. Finally, the author expresses concern over censorship and centralized control issues (Facebook can delete you as a customer if you don't follow their rules or upset their advertisers)and posits the need for new systems with less centralized control. This is a good book.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The central premise of the book is that what we call "new media" is actually a return to the way we used to communicate information before the advent of mass media. Standage takes us through a series of key moments or eras in Western history (the Roman Empire and early Christianity, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the invention of the mass media, and the dawn of the Internet) and analyzes each in terms of the way news and information were communicated.

I found it fascinating to learn about the prototypes for wall posts in Pompeii (highly personal graffiti), for blogs in the Reformation (commonplace books to collect interesting passages from printed books), and for web forums in the Enlightenment (coffeehouses and the early periodicals shared there). Standage made the excellent decision to present these informational ecosystems in their own right and to allow the reader to make the connections to today's practices on their own. It's only in the epilogue where those implicit comparisons become explicit.

I found the book highly engaging and would strongly recommend it.

[John Behle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tom Standage writes a hard working, diligent manual on how we communicate by word.

Goodreads is a shining example of how far we have come. For each of the several billion walking our good earth, everyone can, with a few finger clicks, become a published book critic. Instantly, anyone can then read and comment on this review, forward it, excerpt it.

Previously, media was tightly controlled by a few-governments, book producers, newspaper owners and editors, radio and TV networks. To get one's message out meant being judged, approved, red-penciled, abridged, then...maybe...chosen for precious space on paper or air time.

I liked his 2005 work, "The History of the World in Six Glasses." Standage writes for The Economist. His knack is steady, heady social reporting.

He weaves that while the ways, means and speed have changed, our behavior has not. Each one of us strives to be heard, to be listened to, to be honored for being human.

Sharing our ideas has made us more aware, more bold, more free.

[Joseph Rizzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. It was fascinating. Think of it as a brief history of media, communication, and the technologies we use to facilitate them. It focuses on communication within the roman empire, then jumps to the printing press, reformation, 17th century England, and on to the present. The most eye opening part of the book that should have been obvious is how it helps you to think about todays social media environment as a digital version of its pre-mass media antecedents. It points out that most communication before the industrial revolution was truly social media, based on a persons individual circles, to gather information, and that the rise of mass media (radio, television, newspapers) was really the anomaly. Internet and social media is a return to previous analog models of information sharing and to the democratization of information.
Great book!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw the next book club book was about social media. Dread. Not happy. This was not the book that I voted for. I've avoided and looked down upon Facebook, Twitter, and other means to avoid actually talking to someone. Yes, I realize that I'm writing this on a social media book site. Irony? Weakness? Probably, just the reality of the times we live in.
To the book: Wanted to hate it and wanted to complain about it, but when I read it, I just couldn't. As I read, I thought that this book is not really about social media, but rather about the history of communication. As a history book, with snapshots of the critical innovations that led to changes in the ways we communicate, and the broader audience that we can reach with each innovation, I found it entertaining.