According to Standage, what characterizes "social media" is not so much the technology with which they manifest themselves, but their sharing, conversational and communicative power that is hidden behind them. Horizontal, person-to-person communication in the form of a network. The single becomes "mass" which at the end of the race decides and gives meaning to the message.

The Medium is the Message

This book is a good historical summary on "social media". It allows us to understand the evolution of communication over time, also taking into consideration the biological and evolutionary needs of people who adapt their communication needs to the tools they have at their disposal.

A Historical Summary

Or the network of connections that printers created before and after the American War of Independence to spread messages between the southern and northern states. Likewise a network of English printers and writers in the 17th century when they created what would later become the "niche" printing house.

The Printing House

The printer-publishers were capitalists who controlled groups of newspapers and magazines as well as books for the general public. This editorial verticality has clouded our perception of what is "worth" to know. Social sites have questioned this communicative approach. On FB the "likes" establish tastes, trends, the future of a product, the prospects of a policy.

The Printers-Publishers

The same thing is done on Twitter, as well as on Google+ with its "pluses". Thus we all become "viral", in the sense that each of our communication that passes through an electronic medium, a message, an image, a video, a link, can reach an unpredictable number of people in real time, in any place. And condition them, redistributing the same message.

All Viral

This book reads pleasantly, although there are gaps. It is not easy to enclose two thousand years and more of communication in a book. This does not mean that the book remains a valid testimony of how and to what extent the new media, in particular the so-called "social" ones, represent a great push towards change. For better or for worse, it is too early to tell.

A Book Testimony

Tom Standage states in his book the idea that new media are the driving force behind many change movements, revolutions of thought and human behavior. They are the ones who spread the new ideas as it was in the time of the Roman Empire, of post-Reformation Europe, of the American War of Independence. What allowed all this was the dissemination of ideas all interconnected in an informal way, in one way or another, networks of thinkers, readers and writers eager to confront and share.

New Ideas

Groups of people involved in communication in various capacities, all white, male, wealthy who met in local cafes to discuss ideas and projects. We talked, wrote and read about politics, literature, poetry, art and economics, often in a very informal way. The ninth chapter of the book seems to me to be the most interesting. He deals with the centralization of communication that began with the invention of the internal combustion engine and the printing press. The middle and lower classes, including women, were able to be part of this world in a decisive way.

The Printing Press

Forms of writing with abbreviations on erasable plates were used. These communications were obviously only high social "elites", people who could afford a messenger slave. The other social classes were excluded. Standage analyzes various historical situations in which the media of the time played a decisive role in determining facts and events.

Forms of writing

Standage reviews the past two millennia. In our digital age, authors proliferate, publishers are in big trouble, copyrights are abused and violated, books sell like any market product, everyone in the world of writing is looking for visibility to make money. Today, as always, a kind of ancient agony, the same agony of the time of Cicero in Rome, of that of the seventeenth century in England and of France before the Revolution. Just read the story in a non-superficial way.

Two Millennia

He starts from the description of how the traditional postal service developed in ancient Rome, expanding the borders of the empire with couriers, the slave trade, the famous "tabellari" that carried messages from one side to the other. A way to transmit news, personal and service communications, on the most disparate topics, including "gossip".

From "Tabellari" to Gossip

Writers and readers were increasingly dependent on the network of those who printed and sold books and newspapers for a profit. What we now call "popular culture" was invented in this period precisely to meet the demands coming from this audience. Their tastes and opinions were met. For nearly a century and a half Standage believed that the idea of ​​a distributive social network was replaced by the concept of mass information. Thus a hierarchy of media was formed, a vertical rather than a horizontal distribution.

Writers & Readers

Standage remembers the mistake that the Church of Rome made when Martin Luther published his "95 theses". It reacted by publishing writings in Latin and in academic form, ignoring the success of Martin Luther who had written in a colloquial German language accessible to all, publishing his printed Theses, then a completely new medium. We all know how it ended.

"95 theses"

As in the case of the so-called "underground railroad". This was an informal network of secret routes and safe places used since the 19th century by black slaves in the United States to escape to the free states and Canada with the help of abolitionists who stood in solidarity with their cause. The term was also applied to abolitionists who aided fugitives. Other routes led to Mexico or overseas.

The "Underground Railroad".

Papyrus rolls and Twitter have much in common, as each was their generation's signature means of “instant” communication. 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.

Instant Communication

Chronicles social media over two millennia, from papyrus letters that Cicero used to exchange news across the Empire to today, reminding us how modern behavior echoes that of prior centuries and encouraging debate and discussion about how we'll communicate in the future.

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Books

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. After decades of newspapers, radio, and television dominating in dissemination of information, the Internet has spawned a reemergence of social media as a powerful new way for individuals to share information with their friends, driving public discourse in new ways.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.