this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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Showerthoughts
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Uh, no? If by media you mean anything that could remotely considered for the masses then absolutely not. The printing press was so revolutionary because it allowed making multiple copies of written documents without doing them each manually. Reading and writing was so expensive and rare a hobby because the written word was expensive; why would you need to read more than the basic signs if chalk boards were your limit of writing?
"News" before then was word of mouth. Town criers and the like.
My neato.
Guy replies with a hyperbolic shitpost about capitalism.
OP replies sincerely.
I reply hyperbolically in turn.
You assume I'm serious, then assume media can only mean "the mass news media" while ignoring any subtler parallels about access to information and adoption. (e.g. Does reading and writing being expensive relate to the early internet where access and hosting were expensive? Does the evolution of the written word have parallels with the evolution of the internet?)
If I'm responding semi-seriously, I do want to note that it's only in the American school system where there's no writing until the west gets paper. Armies of scribes carved into stone, impressed into clay, and wrote onto vellum to blanket empires in written news.
Yes. This semi-happened elsewhere. But this isn't for the "people". These were for the rich and powerful and the government.
And I'm sorry if your shitpost wasn't understood. As has always been the case, text is not a great medium for conveying sarcasm. We did invent /s for that reason.
"No! There are absolutely no parallels between the written word and the development of the internet," you growl through gritted teeth. "And while the stone markers distributed with text in several languages including that of the common people and placed in gathering areas did provide news to the people, it only carried the news the royals wanted them to now about," you finish triumphantly, not realizing that proves the point being made.