A History of Mass Communication Six Information Revolutions

Microsoft Word - sixrevolutionsSix Information Revolutions
kranthi.vardhan
Copyright ® 1997 by Butterworth-Heinemann
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fang, Irving E.
A history of information revolutions / Irving Fang. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-240-80254-3 (pbk. : acid-free paper) 1. Communication—History. I. Title. P90.F26 1997 302.2'09-dc20 96-36527
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Contents
Acknowledgments xiv
What Are Information Revolutions? Defining an Information Revolution xv Six Information Revolutions xvii Shared Characteristics xviii The Power of Information xix Highway and Village xx Sorting Media from Content xx Replacing Transportation xxi Shaping and Being Shaped xxi Difficult Beginnings xxii Life Is Different xxii
Political Tools and Weapons xxiii Arresting Gorbachev xxiv Tiananmen Square xxiv The Infection of Mass Communication xxvi Terrorism and the Media xxvii Clandestine Radio xxvii Middle Eastern Examples of Media's Force xxviii New World Information Order xxviii Cultural Imperialism xxix Economic Freedom with Political Controls xxx Altering American Politics xxxi The Gulf War xxxi Notes xxxiii
1 Writing The First Revolution 1 The Invention of Writing 1
Writing on Clay 1 Advancing Knowledge 2
vi CONTENTS
Skin and Bones and Papyrus 3 Papyrus in Egypt 4 Papyrus in Greek Hands 5 Parchment 6 Other Writing Surfaces 7
The Greeks 7 The Alphabet 8
Out of the Dark Ages 8 A Time of Turmoil 10 Supplementing an Oral Culture 11 The Warning of Socrates 12 From Greece to Rome 12 The First Libraries 12 The Lamp of Reason 14
Carrying the Message 14 Notes 16
2 Printing
News 19 Reformation and Renaissance 20
A Gift from China 20 Origins 21 No Information Revolution 22 Paper Moves West 22 300 Sheep Skins for One Bible 23
Books and Universities 23 The First Universities 24 The New Book Culture 25 Censorship 26 Punishment for Publishing 27
Mail in the Middle Ages 28 Postal Services for Town and Gown 28 Postal Service as a Business 29
Here a New, There a New 30 Forerunners of Newspapers 31 The First Newspapers 31 Unintended Consequences 32
Printing and Literacy 32 Vernacular Printing 32 Why Bother to Read? 33 The Engines of Printing and Literacy 34 Literacy and Equality 34
Did Gutenberg Know About China? 35 European Ferment 36
What Did Gutenberg Know? 36 Movable Type in China and Korea 38 Gutenberg's Achievement 38 Notes 41
3 Mass Media
The Third Revolution 43 The Turmoil of a New Age 43 The
Shift to Cities 43 It Also Brought Misery 44 Three Revolutions 44 Child Labor 45 Social Changes 46 Mass Dependencies 46
Printing for Everyone 47 Printing Changes 47 Stereotyping 48 Setting the Type 48 Offset Lithography 49
Paper for Everyone 49 A Continuous Sheet of Paper 49 A Lesson from a Wasp 50
The Information Pump 51 The Business of Newspapers 51 The Penny Press 52 Reporting 52 The Birth of Objectivity 53 Improvements in the Composing Room 54 Photographs in Newspapers 54 Free Presses 55 Controlled Presses 55
The Muckrakers 56 Women Can Type 57
Helping to Bring Women Out 57 The Old Office 57 Inventing a Writing Machine 58 The Sholes Machine 58 Women Mean Business 59 QWERTY 59
"If Anyone Desires..." 60 Creating Demand 60 Origins of Advertising 61 The Word Is "Advertising" 61 The Advertising Agency 62 Catalogs and Patent Medicines 63 Brand Names 63 More Advertising Tools 64
CONTENTS vii
viii CONTENTS
Radio Advertising 64 Televising Advertising 64 Setting Standards 65
Solving Postal Problems 65 Postmasters and Publishers 66 Postal Services for Newspapers 67 Transporting the Mail 67 International Agreement 68
Photography 69 Ancient Roots 69 The Chemical Basis of Photography 70 Daguerre and TaTbot 70 Wet-Plate Photography 72 Photographing the World 72 The Muckrakers' Photos 74 Photoengraving 74 The Copier 75 Looking Ahead 76
Current News 77 Newspapers Change 77 Ancient Signals 77 The First Telegraphs 78 "What Hath God Wrought?" 79 Western Union Takes the Lead 79 Its Role in Transmitting News 80 News Agencies 81 Changes in Service 82
Voices on a Wire 83 Intruder and Rescuer 83 "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." 84 Can the Lower Classes Use It? 86 The Telephone As an Early Radio 86 Telephone Operators 87 Into the Twentieth Century 88
Signals in the Air 89 Some of Radio's Societal Effects 89 Origins of Radio 90 Marconi 90 Competition 91 The Titanic 92 Voice 92 Hobbyists Tune In 93
Movies Are Born 95 Movies As a Communication Medium 95 How Movies Began 96 Edison Orders an Invention 97 Motion Picture Projection 97 Projected Movies Come to America 98
The Earliest Films 98 Notes 99
4 Entertainment The Fourth Revolution 101 Public Recreation 101 Money
from the Poor 102 Entertaining Newspapers 103
Adding Color 103 Magazines for the Fragmented Public 104
English and Colonial Beginnings 104 Plagiarism Was Common 105 The Nickel Magazines 106
The Novel 106 Entertainment on a Plate 107 The
Start of Recorded Music 107 Nothing Ever Like It 108 Phonograph Parlors 109 The Phonograph as Furniture 109 Dancing and Jazz 110 High Fidelity 111
Portable Recording 112 The Story of Audiotape 112 Germans Move A head 113 A Tool for Journalists 113 New Formats 114
Broadcasting 114 Isolating Listeners 115 The Radio Act of 1927 116 Commercials 117 Broadcasting Policy in Other Countries 118 Networks 118
Owning Cameras 119 Technical Improvements 119 The Kodak 120 More Improvements 121 Pictures that Lie 121 Holograms 122
Movies Tell Stories 123 Nickelodeons 123 Fear of Revolutionary Ideas 125 A Market for Simple Stories 126 The Actors 127 Assembly Line Production 128 Motion Pictures in Other Countries 129 The Coming of Sound 130
CONTENTS ix
X CONTENTS
The Coming of Color 131 The Stars and Their Films 132 Censorship 133 Political Issues 133 The Drive-in 134 Enter Television 134 The Distribution Schedule 135 Making Movies Cheaply 136 Notes 137
5 The Toolshed Home The Fifth Revolution 138 The Communication Toolshed 138 What
Makes a House a Home? 138 Contacts Decrease 139 Extending the Toolshed Home 140 Problems with Heavy Media Usage 141
Home Mail Delivery 142 Free Home Delivery 142 Parcels, Catalogs, and Junk Mail 143 Changes 144
New Uses for Phones 145 Telephone Company Reorganizations 145 Cellular Phones 146 Pocket Phones 146 The New Picturephones 147 A Variety of Uses 147 Reach Out Without Touching 148
"Free" Entertainment 148 Political Broadcasts 149 Cultural Influence 149 Improving the Sound 150 Radio Reinvents Itself 150 Citizen's Band 151 Looking in Radio's Crystal Ball 151 The Benefits of Broadcasting 151
Pictures in the Parlor 152 Time Spent Watching 153 The Scientific Roots of Television 154 Electronic Television 154 The Public Is Introduced to Television 156 The Fight Over Standards 157 HDTV 158 The Commercial Basis 158 Programming 158 Settings and Plots 159 Soap Operas 159
The Sitcoms 160 What Is for Children ? 160 Talk Shows and "Infotainment" 161 Paying for Programming 161 The Decline of Broadcasting 162
Tragedy in the Parlor 162 Radio News 163 Two Roots of Television News 164 Kennedy Assassination Coverage 165 The Civil Rights Movement 165 Anti-War Demonstrations 166 "The Living Room War" 167 Not Newspaper Journalism 168 Sometimes a Global Village 168
Wiring the Toolshed 169 Two Trojan Horses 170 How Cable Began 170 CATV Pioneers 171 Originating Programming 172 Cable's Early Growth 172 City Franchises 173 Pay-TV Without Cable 174
Videotape, a New Book 174 Advantages of the Home VCR 174 Trying to Record Television 175 The First Videotape Machines 175 Electronic News Gathering 176 Going to the Movies at Home 177 The Near Future 178 Spreading Worldwide 179 Broadening the Video Journalist Base 180 Video Piracy 180 "Cultural Imperialism" 181 Video Production Diffusion 181
Setting New Records 182 Radio and Recording 183 High Fidelity 184
We Still Have Books 185 Notes 187
6 The Highway The Sixth Revolution 189 Heavy Traffic 189 Choices 190
Interactivity 191 Separated by Communication 192 Distant Connections 193
CONTENTS xi
xii CONTENTS
Computer at the Wheel 194 A Tool of Communication 194 How It All Began 195 Desktop Publishing 195
Magazines Target Their Readers 197 Multimedia, a Newer Book 198
What Is Multimedia? 198 CD- ROM 199 CD-ROM Zines 200
Cable Narrowcasting 201 Ted Turner Moves In 201 New Channels 202 Home Shopping 203 Cable Franchises 203 Pay Cable 204 Wireless Cable 205 Fiber Optics 205 Programming Through Optical Fibers 206
Footprints on the Globe 207 Geopolitical Considerations 207 A Split-Second Apart 208 Changes in News Reporting Structures 208 The Beginnings 209 INTELSAT 210 Video Teleconferencing 211 Direct Broadcasting 211 C-Band and Ku-Band 212 Scrambling the Signal 213 Teleports 213 A Limit to Infinite Space 213
Electronic Commuting 214 Who Works at Home? 215 Advantages of Working from Home 215 The Telecenter 216 Where Will We Live? 216 What Will Happen to Cities? 217
The Internet 217 Who Owns the Internet? 218 The World Wide Web 219 Electronic Cash 220 Bulletin Boards 220 Exercising Control 221 Knowlege Groups 222 Advertising 222 Chat Lines 223 Social Implications 223 Radio on the Internet 224
Mailbox in the Computer 225
Faxing 226 Speed of Facsimile 227 "Fax" Is More Than a Noun 227 Facsimile's Origins 227 A Variety of Uses 228
Going Up the Highway 229 The Qube Experiment 230 Teletext and Videotex 231 Online Services 232 Other Interactive Operations 232 Interactive Possibilities 232 Manipulating Television Programs 233
News Online 234 The Electronic Newspaper 234 Telcos, Newspapers, and Newscasts 234 Selling News Instead of Newspapers 235 The Computerized Newspaper 236 National Distribution 236 Notes 237
A Summing Up 239 Revisiting the Six Information Revolutions 240
Communication in Three Eras 241 Notes 243
Bibliography 244
Acknowledgments
This book is an attempt to find common themes in the long and complex history of communication. It endeavors to show how the means of communication grew out of their eras, how the tools were developed, how they influenced the societies of those eras, and how they have continued to exert influence upon subsequent generations.
The book is divided into six periods that are identified as information revolutions, recognizing that the events that constitute an information revolution defy neat cate- gorization. For example, motion pictures are both mass information and packaged entertainment. Placing certain events within a particular movement became a necessity for the sake of clarity and narra- tive flow.
Because the author has not found it pos- sible to have a sufficiently detailed knowl- edge of the entire sweep of history covered by this volume, he has relied on the exper-
tise and the kindness of others. Among them are Hyman Berman, Ken Doyle, Mark Heistad, Nancy Roberts, Phillip Tichenor, and William Wells, all of the Uni- versity of Minnesota; documentarists R. Smith Schuneman, Niels Jensen, and Peter Hammar; William Cologie, National Cable Television Center; George Potter, Pennsylvania Cable & Telecommunica- tions Association; Martin Collins, National Air and Space Museum; Haney Howell, Winthrop University; Scott Bourne, net.ra- dio; David Glitzer, Blender; Steve Yelv- ington, Minneapolis Star Tribune; Bernard Finn, Kay Youngflesh, and E.N. Sivowitch, Smithsonian Institution; Thomas Volek, University of Kansas; Steve Blum, USSB; and James Bruns, National Postal Museum. Special thanks are due to Cheri Anderson and Erin Labbie for their research as- sistance, and to Annie Singer for her drawings.
xiv
Information
Revolutions?
Year by year more people are saying more over more channels on more topics to a bigger total audience. The Internet is ex- ploding. The talk in cable television is of 500 channels. Videotape stores sell used tapes to clear their crowded shelves. Desk- top publishing pours out newsletters, self- published books, magazines, and multi- media presentations, with no end in sight. New computer software arrives every day. In free industrial nations, bookstores and magazine stands are jammed with product. Libraries hardly know what to do with all their books. It has been true for decades that anyone can own a book. Now, in indus- trial societies, almost anyone can own a movie. Meanwhile, more movies are being shot than ever. And desktop video is bring- ing a budget version of Hollywood to Main Street. Meanwhile, home computers ex- pand information use in ways only recently undreamed.
Even if it were nothing else, our Infor- mation Age is the latest in a series of social revolutions that define and span recorded history. A desire to produce communica- tion as well as to consume it has been
present in every generation. Venturesome souls have risked personal freedom, sav- ings, reputation, even life and limb to cre- ate and distribute information. In the present generation, when technology has merged the computer and other connective media like cable and satellite with end-user media like books and television, opportuni- ties have arisen that find their closest com- parison in the fifteenth century, when printing began in Europe and the old limits crumbled.
Defining an Information Revolution The wish to remember something by writ- ing it down led over the course of millennia to the start of the first information revolu- tion. It and the revolutions that followed would shape humankind more than any wars or any kings ever did or could. With a few scratches, our inventive ancestors set in motion the never ending story of re- corded information, the communication and storage of knowledge outside the brain. Here broke history's long dawn.
XV
xvi A HISTORY OF MASS COMMUNICATION
What would constitute an information revolution? The word revolution implies a sudden and often violent change, but revo- lutions can be more subtle, evolving over decades, even centuries.1 In the general parlance, revolution is an overwrought de- scription of any societal developments. The word long ago became a cliche. Con- sider it here in the sense of profound changes involving new means of commu- nication that permanently affect entire so- cieties, changes that have shaken political structures and influenced economic devel- opment, communal activity, and personal behavior. Unlike so many of our wars and switching of rulers, information revolu- tions create changes, intended or not, that stick. The new media of information be- come part of the changing society.
It appears evident that for an information revolution to succeed, media that will pro- vide new means for communication must be disseminated within societies already un- dergoing change. Communication technolo- giesby themselves are not enough. The media both aid and are aided by whatever has shaken the existing order, for those who seek change will reach out to grasp what- ever means become available to gain sup- port for their opinions. This is not a new idea. A Chinese of the T'ang dynasty (7th to 10th centuries A.D.) wrote, "When customs change, writing changes."2 As those opinions spread, so does awareness of the media themselves. From awareness comes use by other hands. The interwoven cause and effect relationship between social change and media development has continued since the beginnings of recorded history. The argument may be stated this way: if you build a better mousetrap, the world will not beat a path to your door unless the world can be shown that there are mice to be caught. That has been the story of the tools of communication, the "better mousetraps." They have affected much in our lives, but inventions by themselves do not change society. When people want change enough to take action, an invention helps. In the industrial nations throughout the century that we are now completing, change has been constant and constantly desired.
Social revolutions—those that perma- nently affect the lives of most inhabi- tants—do not emanate from royal edicts. They grow from disturbed soil, an open- ness to change, at least at some societal levels. Media join the turbulence, fastening means to purpose. The tools of communi- cation become weapons in some hands, while in others they serve to extend hu- mankind's knowledge and the richness of intelligent life.
The social turbulence that provides the necessary basis for an information revolu- tion leads to independence of thought and the capacity for growth. Graham Greene played a bit fast and loose with history, but made at least a discussable point in The Third Man, when his amoral character Harry Lime said, "In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of de- mocracy and peace. And what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."
One or more new communication tech- nologies arriving in the midst of social change can lead to an information revolu- tion that adds to the turmoil and, more importantly, leaves permanent marks on the society. Indeed, the world is in the midst of an information revolution now, a period identified with capital letters as the Information Age, a product of the informa- tion revolution of the second half of the twentieth century. Yet, the second half of the fifteenth century, following Guten- berg's invention of printing, deserves as much as our own half century to be called the Information Age. A strong claim as the Information Age could also be made for the second half of the nineteenth century, following the inventions of photography and the telegraph, a half century that gave birth to the phonograph, telephone, type- writer, motion pictures, and radio, plus significant changes in printing and early experiments in television and in recording tape technology. Each of these communi- cation technologies was born in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, a time of ten-
WHAT ARE INFORMATION REVOLUTIONS xvii
sion across all layers of contemporaneous society.
Of course, changes in communication occurred during quieter periods as well, but those identified here took a role in creating a qualitative difference in society. The change has always led toward an equalizing of the status of members of society, the road toward democracy. That there has never in human history been true equality should not detract from an appreciation of genuine improvement in human affairs.
Six Information Revolutions This book identifies six periods in Western history that fit the description of an infor- mation revolution. The periods range in time from the eighth century B.C. to the near future.
The first of the six information revolu- tions may be characterized as the Writing Revolution. It began primarily in Greece about the eighth century B.C., with the convergence of the phonetic alphabet, an import from Phoenicia to the east, and pa- pyrus, an import from Egypt to the south. With writing used to store knowledge, the human mind would no longer be con- strained by the limits of memory. Knowl- edge would be boundless.
The second information revolution, the Printing Revolution, began in Europe in the second half of the fifteenth century, with the convergence of paper, an import origi- nally from China, but proximately from the Arab and Moorish cultures, and a printing system that the German goldsmith Johan- nes Gutenberg assembled, perhaps from a variety of sources. With printing, informa- tion spread through many layers of…