1 The Judgment of Thamus Y ou will find in Platos Plu.docx

1
The Judgment of Thamus
Y ou will find in Plato's Plu!edrns
a story about Thamus, the kmg of a great city of Upper Egypt.
For people such as ourselves, who are mclined (in Thoreau's
phra e) to be tools of our tools, few legends are more instructive
than his The story, as Socrates tells 1t to h1s fnend Phaedrus,
unfolds in the followmg way . Thamus once entertamed the god
Theuth, who was the inventor of many things, including num-
ber, calculation, geometry, astronomy, and writing. Theuth ex-
hibited his inventions to King Thamus, claiming that they
hould be made widely known and available to Egyptians.
Socrates continues·
Thamus mqu1red mto the use of each of them, and as
Theuth went through them expressed approval or disap-
proval, according as he Judged Theuth's claims to be well
or ill founded. It would take too long to go through all that
Thamus is reported to have said for and against each of
Theuth's inventions. But when it came to writing, Theuth
declared, "Here 1s an accomplishment, my lord the King,
4 Technopoly
wh1ch w1ll improve both the wisdom and the memory of

the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure rece1pt for memory
and wisdom." To th1s, Thamus replied, "Theuth, my para-
gon of mventors, the d1scoverer of an art is not the best
judge of the good or harm wh1ch will accrue to those who
practice it. So 1t 1s m th1s; you, who are the father of
wntmg, have out of fondness for your off-spring at-
tributed to 1t quite the opposite of its real funchon . Those
who acqwre it will cease to exercise the1r memory and
become forgetful; they w1ll rely on writing to bnng thmgs
to the1r remembrance by external 1gn mstead of by their
own internal resources. What you have discovered 1s a
rece1pt for recollechon. not for memory And as for WIS-
dom. your pup1ls will have the reputahon for it w1thout
the reality· they will rece1ve a quanhty of information
w1thout proper mstruction, and in consequence be thought
very knowledgeable when they are for the most part qUJte
ignorant. And because they are filled wuh the conceit of
wisdom mstead of real wisdom the.Y will be a burden to
soaety." 1
I begm my book with thi legend because in Tharnus' re-
spo~se there are several sound pnnciples from which we may
begm to learn how to think w1th wise mcumspedion about a
technological soc1ety. In fact, there 1s even one error in the
judgment of Thamus, from wruch we may also learn something

of importance. The error 1s not m his daim that writing will
damage memory and create false wisdom. It 1s demonstrable
tha.t writing ha had such an effect. Thamus' error 1s in his
f behevmg that wnting will be a burden to society and nothing
but
a burdtn For all his wisdom, he fails to imagine what writing's
benefits m1ght be wh· h kn
· 1c . as we ow, have been considerable.
We may learn from this that It IS a mistake to suppose that any
technological innovation has a one-sided effect. Every techno!-
The Judgment of Thamus 5
ogy i both a burden and a ble ing; not e1ther-or, but this-and-
that.
Nothing could be more obv10u . of cour e, espec1ally to
tho e who have given more than two mmute of thought to the
matter. Nonethele , we are currently urrounded by throngs of
zealou Theuth . one-eyed prophet who ee only what new
technologie can do and are mcapable of 1magimng what they
wi11
1
mdo. We m1ght call such people T chnophiles. They gaze
on technology a a lover doe on h1 beloved, eeing it a
without blemi h and entertammg no apprehen ion for the fu-

ture. They are therefore dangerou and are to be approached
cautiou ly. On the other hand, orne one-eyed prophets. such as
I (or 0 I am accu ed). are mchned to peak only of burdens (m
the manner of Thamu ) and are 1lent about the opportumties
that new technolog1e make po 1ble The T echnophiles must
speak for them elve , and do o all over the place. My defense
is that a di enting vo1ce 1 omehme needed to moderate. the
dm made by the enthusia he multitudes. If one IS to err, 1t IS
oetter to err on t e i e of Thamu ian kephCi m. But Jt IS an
error nonethele . And I might note that. w1th the exception of
hi judgment on writing. Tharnu do not repeat thi error.
You might notice on rereadmg the legend that he g•ves argu-
ments for and a amsf each of Theuth' mventions. For 1t is
me capable that every culture mu t negotiate with technology,
whether it doe o mtelligently or not A bargain IS truck 10
wh1ch technology g1veth and technology taketh away. T~e
wi e know th1 well. and are rarely 1mpre ed by dramahc
technolog1cal change . and never overJoyed Here, for example,
is Freud on the matter. from h1 doleful CtVJllzatwn and Its
Dtscontmt .
One would hke to ask. 1 there. then. no posihve gain in

pleasure, no unequivocal mcrea e m my feeling of hap~i-
ness, if I can, as often a I plea e, hear the voice of a child
6 Technopoly
of mine who is ltving hundred of mile away or if I can
learn m the shorte t possrble hme after a fnend ha reached
hrs de tinahon that he has come through the long and
drfficult voyage unharmed? Doe it mean nothrng that
medrcme has succeeded m enormou ly reducrng rnfant
mortality and the danger of rnfedron for women rn child-
birth, and, rndeed, m con iderably lengthenrng the average
life of a crvilized man?
Freud knew full well that technrcal and crenhfic advance are
not to be taken lrghtly, whrch r why he begrn thr pa age by
acknowledgmg them. But he end rt by remrnding u of what
they have undone·
If there had been no railway to conquer dr tance , my chrld
would never have left hrs nahve town and I hould need
no telephone to hear hi vorce, rf travellrng aero the
ocean by shrp had not been rntroduced, my fnend would
not have embarked on hrs sea-voyage and I hould not
need a cable to relieve my anxrety about hrm What r the
use of reducmg rnfanhle mortality when rt r precr ely that
reduchon whrch imposes the greatest restrarnt on us rn the
begethng of chrldren, so that, taken all round, we never-
theless rear no more children than in the days before the
reign of hygiene, whrle at the arne hme we have created
difficult condrhons for our sexual life m mamage And,
finaJiy, what good to us r a long ltfe if rt r difficult and
barren of JOys, and if rt is so full of mrsery that we can only

welcome death as a delrverer7 2
In tabulatmg the cost of technologrcal progress, Freud take
a rather depressrng line, that of a man who agrees with Tho-
reau's remark that our inventions are but rmproved means to an
unrmproved end. The T echnop i e would surely answer Freud
. that life ha alway been barren of joy and full of
by ayrng II h
mi ery but that the telephone. ocean liner . and e pecra y .t e
. f h 'ene have not only lengthened life but made rt a rergn o ygr
1
more a reeable propo ition. That i certainly an argument
would make (thu provin I am no one- yed Technophobe), but
· t ary at thi pornt to pur u it. I have brought 1t 1 no nee .
F d into th conver ation only to h w that a wr e man-
reu b · h
even one of uch a woeful countenance-mu t e rn r cn-
hque of technolo b acknowled in it ucc e . Had Krn
Thamu be n a wi a reputed, h would not have forgotten
to include in hi JUd ment a prophecy about th power that
wribng would enlarge. There i a calculu of technologrcal
change that require a mea ure of even-handedne
So much for Thamu ' error of omr ron There 1 another
omr ron worthy of note, but rt 1 no error. Thamu 1mply take ~
for granted-and therefore do not feel it nece ary to ay- ~
that writin i not a neutral te hnolo who good or harm
depend on the u e made of it. He know that the u e made
of any technolo yare largely deterrnrned by the tru ture of the
technolo y it If-that i , that it tunctron follow from rt
form. Thi i why Thamu i concerned not with what people

wrtl wnte; he i once~d Hmt people will wnte It r ab urd to
imagine Thamu advi ing. rn the manner of today' tandard-
brand Technophile , that, rf only writing would be u ed for the
production of certain kind of text and not other (let u ay,
for dramatic literature but not for hr tory or ph1lo ophy), rt
di ruption could be mrnrmrzed He v.ould re ard uch coun el
a extreme na1vete He would allow, I 1magrne, that a technol-
ogy may be barred entry to a culture But we may learn from
Thamu the followrng once a technology r admrtted, rt play
out it hand, it doe what rt r de rgned to do ur ta k r to
understand what that de rgn r -that r to ay, when we admrt
a new technolo y to the culture, we mu t do o wrth our eye
wide open.
8 Technopoly
All of tht we ma y mfer from Thamu ' ilence But we may
learn even more from what he doe ay than from what he
doe n't He pomt out, for example that wnbng wtll change
what 1 meant by the word "memory" and "wt dom." He fear
that memory wtll be confu ed with what he dt damfully call
~and he warne that wt dotn wtll become tndt tin-
gut hable from mere knowled e Tht judgment we mu t take
to eart, or 1 i a certamty that radical technologte create new
defimhon of old term and that tht proce take place wtth-
out our bemg fully con ctou of tt Thu , tt 1 m 1d10u and
dangerou qutte dtfferent from the proce whereby new tech-
nologte mtroduce new term to the language In our own time,
we have con ctou ly added to our language thou and of new
word and phra e havmg to do with new technologte -
"VCR," bmary dtgtt," " oftware," "front -wheel dnve," "wm-
dow of opportumty,' 'Walkman " etc. We are not taken by
urpn e at tht ew thmg requtre new word . But new thmg

also modify old word , word that have deep-rooted meanmg
The telegraph an t e pennypre changed what weonce
meant by 'mformabon. Televt ion change what we on e
meant by the term polttical debate ' new ," and ' ublic
opm10n ." The computer change "mformahon" once agam.
Wrihng changed what we once meant by "truth" and "law~
prinbng changed them again, and now televt ton and the com-
puter change them once more Such chan e occur qutckly,
surely, and, in a sen e, ilently Lextcographer hold no plebt -
ates on the matter o manual are wntten to explam what 1
happenmg, and the chools are obltvtou to tt. The old word
still look the arne, are bll u ed m the arne kind of entence .
But they do not have the same meanmg m orne ca e , they
have oppo ite meanmg . And tht 1 what Thamu wt he to
teach u -that technology tmpenou ly commandeer our mo t
tmportant terminology. It redefine "freedom," "truth," "intellt-
gence," "fact ," 'wisdom," "memory," "ht tory"-all the word
Tht Judgment of Thamus 9
not pau e to tell u . And we do not we live by. And it doe
pau e to a k. e elabora-
. fad about technological chan e requtr om
. Tht d I wtll return to the matter in a lat r chapter Here, there
hon. an . . I to be mined from th Judgment of
are everal more pnnop e. . r a e all I will
Thamu that require menttonm becau they p g f
·t bout For in tanc , Thamu warn that the pupt! o
wn e a · · f d He
Theuth will develop an und rved reputation or wt om
mean to ay that tho e who cultivate comp t nee m the u e of
a new technolo y become an elite roup that ar grantea
unde erved autnonty and pre tige oy tho e who have .no uch

competence. There are differ nt way of expr m the mtere t-
ing implication of thi fa t. Harold lnni , the fathe~ of modem
communication tudie , rep ate<lly pol<e of the knowled e
monopolie " creat d by imp rtant te hnolo te He meant pre-
ci ely what Thamu had in mind : tho who have control over
the wor 'ng of a particular technolo y accumulate power and
inevitably form a kind of con piracy a ain t th who have no
acce s to the pecialized know) d e mad available by the
technology. In hi book The Bws of Co nmnmication Inm pro-
vide many hi torical exampl of how a new technology
"busted up" a traditional knowledge monopoly and created a
new one pre ided over by a dtfferent roup Another way of
saymg tht i that the ben fit and deficit of a new technology
are not di tributed equally There ar , a tt were, wmner and
lo er It ts both puzzling and poignant that on many occa ton
the lo er , out of tgnorance, have actually che red the wmner ,
and orne hll do
let u take a an example the ca of televt ton In the Umted
State , where televi ion ha taken hold more de ply than any-
where el e, many people find 1t a ble m , n t lea t tho e who
have achteved htgh-paym , grahfym car er m televt ton a
execuhve , techniaan , new ca ter and entertainer . It hould
surpri e no one that uch people, forrmng a they do a new
10 Technopoly
knowledge monopoly, should cheer themselves and defend and
promote television technology On the other hand and in the
long run, television may bnng a gradual end to the career of
choolteacher , mce school was an mvention of the ~in
pre s and must tand or fall on the 1 ue of how much impor-

tance the printed word ha . For four hundred years, school-
teacher have been part of the knowledge monopoly created by
printing, and they are now w1tne mg the breakup of that
monopoly It appear a 1f they can do little to prevent that
breakup, but surely there IS omething perverse about chool-
teacher ' bemg enthu 1ashc about what IS happenmg Such en-
thusiasm alway calls to my mmd an image of orne
tum-of-the-century blacksm1th who not only smg the pra1 es
of the automobile but also believes that his busmess will be
enhanced by it. We know now that h1s bu mes was not en-
hanced by 1t; 1t was rendered ob olete by 1t, as perhaps the
clearheaded blacksmith knew. What could they have done?
Weep, 1f nothmg else
We have a S1m1lar s1tuahon m the development and spread of
computer technology, for here too there are Winner and lo ers.
There can be no d1spuhng that the computer ha mcrea ed the
power of large-scale organizahons like th ~ed forces, or
curline compantes or banks or tax-collectmg agencies. And it is
equally clear that the computer i now indispensable to hi h-
level researchers in physics and other natural sciences. But to
what extent has computer technology been an advantage to the
masse of people? To steelworkers, vegetable-store owners,
teachers, garage mechan1cs, musiCians, bricklayers, dentists,
and
most of the rest mto whose lives the computer now intrudes?
The1r pnvate matters have been made more accessible to pow-
erful inshtuhons. They are more eas1ly tracked and controlled;

are subjected to more examinations; are mcreasingly mystified
by the decisions made about them; are often reduced to mere
numencal objects. They are inundated by junk mail. They are
111, Judgment of Tha us 11
L t for adverti ing a encie and p libcal or anizah n easy ,arge . d
The school teach their children to operate comput nze Y -
• L d of teachmg thing that ar more aluable to hil-tems ms,ea
dren. In a word, almo t nothing that the ne d happen to th
losers. Which is why they are lo er .
It i to be expected that the mner will encoura e the I er
to be enthu ia tic about com uter t chn lo That 1 the way
of winners, and o they ometime tell the lo er that w1th
personal computer the average p r on can balance a checkbook
more neatly, keep better track of reCipe , and make more
log1cal
shopping li t . They al o tell them that the1r live will be
conducted more efficiently. But di creetly they neglect to ay
from who e point of view the effiCiency i warranted or what
might be it co t Should the lo er grow kephcal the wmner
dazzle them wtth the wondrou feat of computer almo t all
of which have only marginal rele ance to the quality of the
lo er ' live but wh1ch are nonethele impre 1 e Eventually,

the lo er succumb, m part becau e they believe a Thamu
prophesied. that the pecialized knowledge of the rna ter of a
new technology i a form of WI dom The rna ter come to
believe thi as well, a Thamu at o prophe 1ed The re ult 1
that certain que tion do not an e. For example, to whom will
the technology g1ve greater power and freedom? And who e
power and freeaom will be reduced by 1 t7
I have perhap made all of th1 oun like a well-planned
conspiracy, a if the winners know all too well what 1 bemg
won and what lost . But thi i not quite how it happen For one
thing, in cui t have a democratic etho 'ivefy w ak
traditions, and a high receptivity to new te hnolo 1e everyone
iS1il ined to be entfiu 1as 1c about technological change,
behev-
ing that 1ts benefit will eventually pread evenly among the
entire populahon Especially in the United States, where the lu t
for what is new has no bounds do we find thi childlike convic-
hon most widely held . Indeed, m Amenca, oc1al change of any
12 Technopoly
land is rarely seen as resulting in wmner and losers, a cond1hon

that terns m part from Amencan much-documented opti-
mism. As for change brought on by technology, th1s nahve
ophmi m is exploited by entrepreneur , who work hard to
infuse the populahon WtHot · o tmprobable hope, for they
know that it ts economically unwt e to reveal the pnce to be
pa1d for technologtcal change One might say, then, that, if
there ts a con p1racy of any kind 1t ts that of a culture
conspiring
against itself
In addition to this, and more important, tt ts not always clear,
at lea t m the early tage of a technology's mtru ton mto a
culture, who will ammo t by it and who will lo e most. Tht
1s becau e the change wrought by technology are subtle tf not
downnght mystenou , one might even ay wildly unpredtd-
able. Among the most unpr chctable are tho that m1 ht be
labeled 1deolog1cal.'Tht i the ort of change Thamus had m
mmd when he warned that wnter wtll come to rely on external
signs in tead of their own internal re ources, and that they will
receive quantities of mformation without proper mstruchon. He
meant that new technologie change what we mean b "know-

ing' and "truth"; they alter tho e deeply embedded habits of
though which give to a culture its ense of what the world is
like--a en e of what IS the natural order of thmgs, of what ts
reasonable, of what ts neces ary, of what ts mevitable, of what
1s real Since such changes are expre sed m changed meanings
of old words, I wtll hold off unhl later d1scussmg the mas ive
ideologtcal tran formahon now occumng in the United States.
Here I should hke to gtve only one example of how technology
create new conceptions of what i real and, m the process,
undermines older conceptions. I refer to the seemingly harmless
practice of ass1gnmg marks or grades to the answers students
give on exammations. This procedure seems so natural to most
~f us that we are hardly aware of it s1gmficance. We may even
find tt dtfficult to tmagine that the number or letter is a tool or,
if you will, a technology; till le that, when we u e uch a
technology to judge omeone behaviOr, we have done orne-
thing peculiar. In point of fa t the fir t m tance of gradmg
student ' paper occurred at Cambndge Umver tty in 1792 at

the ugge tion of a tutor named Wtlham Fari h . 3 No one know
much about William Fari h; not more than a handful have ever
heard of him And yet h1 tdea that a quanbtahve value should
be a i n d to human thought wa a maJOr tep toward con-
tructini'? a math matical ncept of reality If a number can be
g1ven to the qualtty of a thought, th n a number can be g1ven
to the qualitie of mer y, love hate beauty, creabv1ty mtelli-
gence, even anity 1t If. When Galtleo atd that the language
of nature 1 wntt n in mathemabc , he dtd not mean to mclude
human feeling or accomplt hment or m 1ght But mo t of u are
now mdined to make the e in lu Jon Our p ycholog1 t , ocJ-
ologi t , and educator find tt qUJte tmpo 1ble to do the1r work
without numb r . Th y b lteve that w1thout number they can -
not acquire or xpr auth nti knowledge
I hall not ar ue here that th1 i a tup1d or dangerou idea.
only that it i p culiar. What 1 ev n more pecultar 1 that o
many of u do not find th id a p uliar To a y that omeone
hould b doin better work b au e h ha an I of 134. or
that omeone i a 7.2 on a en itivity ale or that th1 man '

e ay on the n e of capitalt m 1 an A - and that man ' 1 a C +
would have ounded like gibb n h to Galtleo or Shake peare or
Thoma Jeffer on If 1t make en e to u that 1 becau e our
mmd have been condtboned by the technology of number o
that we ee the world d1fferently than the y dtd . ur under tand-
ing of what i real i different. Wh1ch i another way of a y ing
t~mbedded in eve tool i an JdeolQgteal b1a , a pr d1 po J-
hon to con truct the world a on thin rather Ehan another, to-
value one thtng over another to amp!tfy one en e or ktll or
attitude more loudly than another
Thi i what Mar hall McLuhan meant by h1 famou apho-
14 Techno poly
ri m "The med1um 1 the me sage " Th1 1 what M~eant
when he a1d, 'Technology d1 do e man' mode of dealmg
w1th nature" and create the "cond1hon of mtercour e" by
wh1ch we relate to each other It 1 what W1ttgen tem meant
when, m refernng to our mo t fundamental technology, he
a1d that language 1s not merely a veh1cle of thought but al o
the dnver And 1t 1 what Thamu WI hed the inventor Theuth
to ee Th1 1 , in hort, an anc1ent and per 1 tent p1ece of
WI dom. perhap mo t 1mply expre ed m the old adage that,
to a man w1th a hammer everythmg look hke a nail W1thout
bemg too hteral we may extend the trUI m T a- man w1th a
penCIL everything look like a h t To a man w1th a camera.
everythmg look like an 1mage To a man w1th a computer

everythmg looks like data And to a man w1th a grade
heet everythmg look like a number
But uch preJUdice are not alway apparent at the tart of a
technology' JOurney, wh1ch 1 why no one can afely con p1re
to be a winner m technological change Who would have lmag-
med. for example, who e mtere ts and what world-v1ew would
be ultimately advanced by the mvenbon of the mechamcal
clock7 The clock had 1t ongm m the Benedt tme mona tene of
the twelfth and th1rteenth centune The 1mpetu behmd the
m enhon wa to prov1de a more or le preCI e regularity to the
rouhne of the monastene , wh1ch reqUired, among other
thmg . e en penod of devohon dunng the cour e of the day
The bell of the monastery were to be rung to s1gnal the
canomcaJ hour the mechamcal dock wa the technology that
could prov1de preCI 1on to these ntual of devohon . And mdeed
1t d1d . But what the monk d1d not fore ee wa that the clock
i a mean not merely of keepmg track of the hour but al o of
ynchromzmg and controllmg the achon of men. And thu . by
the m1ddle of the fourteenth century, the clock had moved
outs1de the wall of the mona tery, and brought a new and
preCI e regulanty to the life of the workman and the merchant
The Jud ment of Thamus 15
h I Cl ock , a Lewi Mumford wr te. "mad P 1-. The mec amca · .
d
ble the ,dea of regular f'roduction. regular working hour . an a
d. d d t " In hort without the cl k cap1talt m tandar Jze pro u .
would hav b n qUite lmpos !ble. • Th paradox, the urpn •
and the wonder are that the do k wa inv nt d by m_ n who
wanted to de ote them elve mor n or u ly t G d; 1t end d
a the technology of gr at t u t m n wh wi h d to d t
them elve to the accumulation ot mon y. In th t mal tru -

gle beh en God and Mamm n. th I k quit unpred1ctably
favored the latt r
Unfor en con qu nee tand m th way f all tho
thmk they clear! th dire h n m wht h a n w t hn
w1ll take u ot v n th who inv nt a t hnol "'Y an b
as umed to b r liable proph t . a Thamu warned . Gut nb rg,
for example, wa by all ac unt a d v ut atholic 1 h w uld
hae been hornfi d to h ar that a cur d h r ti Luth r d nb
limHah n f
1cal- that i . 1d
16 Technopoly
among behevers; it will damage the authenticity of your be-
loved Church and de troy it monopoly "
We can tmagme that Thamu would al o have pomted out to
Gutenberg, a he dtd to Theuth, that the new mvenbon would
create a vast populahon of reader who ' will recetve a quanhty
of information without proper tn truchon . [who will be] filled
wtth the concett of WI dom in tead of real wt dom", that read -
ing, ill other words, wtll compete wtth older forms of learning
This i yet another princtple of technologtcaT change we may
infer from the judgment of Thamu : new technologte compete
wtth old one -for hme, for aHenhon. fo_r money, or pre hge,
but mostly for dominance of thetr world-vtew Tht ~pehbon
is Implicit once we acknowledge t at a me ium contam an
tdeologtcal bta . And 1t 1 a fierce compebbon, a only ideologt-
ca1 compebhon can be. H IS not merely a maHer of tool ~ain t

tool-the alphabet aHackmg tdeographtc wnhng, the prinhng
press attacking the Illummated manu cnpt the photograph at-
tacking the art of pamtmg, televt ton aHackmg the pnnted
word When media make war agam t each other, 1t 1 a ca e of
world-vtews tn colh ton .
In the Umted State , we can ee uch colh ton every-
where--m polihcs, in rehgion, tn commerce--but we ee them
~ most clearly m the schools, where two great technologte con-
front each other m uncompromt mg a ped for the control of
students' mmds. On the one hand, there 1 the world of the
printed word wtth tt empha 1 on logic, sequence~.
exposthon, ob}edtvtty, detachment and dt ctpline On the
~ther, there is the world of televt ton with tt empha i on
Imagery, narrahve, pre entne , simultaneity, mhmacy, immedi-
ate grahficahon, and qutck emotional re pon e. Children come
to school having been deeply conditioned by the b
1
ase of
television. There, they encounter the world of the printed word
~ sort of psychic battle takes place, and there are many ca ual-
hes--1:htldren who can' t learn to read or won' t, children who
cannot organize their thought mto logtcal structure even m a
simple paragraph. children who cannot attend to lectures or oral
explanations for more than a few mmute at a hme. They are

failure , but not because they are stuptd They are failures
becau e there i a media war going on, and they are on the
wrong side-at lea t for the moment Who know what chools
will be like twenty-five year from now7 Or fifty? In time, the
type of student who is currently a fatlure may be considered a
succes . The type who i now ucce ful may be regarded as a
handicapped learner--slow to re pond, far too detached, lack-
ing in emotion, inadequate m creating mental ptcture of realtty
Constder· what Thamu called the ' concett of wt dom"-the
unreal knowledge acquired through the wntten word--eventu-
ally became the pre-eminent form of knowledge valued by the
school . There i no reason to uppose that such a form of
knowledge must alway remam o highly valued
To take another example: In introducmg the personal com-
puter to the clas room, we hall be breakmg a four-hundred-
year-old truce between the gregariou ness and openne s
fo tered by orality and the intro pechon and 1 olahon fo tered
by the pnnted word Oraltty tre e group leammg, coopera-
tion. and a en e of soctal re pon ibtltty, whtch 1 the context

within which Thamu beheved proper m truchon and real
knowledge must be commumcated Pnnt tre e mdtviduahzed
learning, competition, and per onal autonomy Over four centu-
ries, teacher , whtle emphastzing print have allowed oraltty tts
place in the cia sroom, and have therefore achteved a kmd of
pedagogical peace between the e two form of leammg, o that
what is valuable m each can be maxtmt zed Now comes the
~o~~uter, carrying anew the banner of privat leammg and
mdivtdual problem-solving Will the wtdespread u e of comput-
ers m the classroom defeat once and for all the clatm of commu-
nal speech? Wtll the computer rat e egocentn m to the statu of
a Vtrtue7
18 Technopoly
These are the lands of questions that technological change
brings to mind when one grasps, as Thamus did, that te hnolog-
ical compehtion 1~ites total war, which means it IS not possible
to contain t e effects of a new technology to a limited sphere
of human activity. If th1s metaphor puts the maHer too brutally,
we may try a gentler, kinder one: Technological chan_g_e is
ne1ther additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean
"ecolog-

Ical" in ffie same sense as the word is used by environmental
scientists. One significant change generates total change. If you
remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left
with the same enVIronment mmus caterpillars. you have a new
environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of
survival, the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environ-
ment that has had none. Th1s is how the ecol~ of med1a -works
as well. A new technology does not add or subtract
somethmg. It changes everything . In the year 1500, fifty years
after the prinhng press was invented, we did not have old
Europe plus the printing press. We had a different Europe. After
television, the Umted States was not America plus television;
television gave a new coloration to every political campaign, to
every home, to every school. to every church, to every mdus-
try. And that is why the competihon among media 1s so fierce.
Surrounding every technology are mshtuhons whose organiza-
tion--not to mention their reason for being-reflects the
world-view promoted by the technology. Therefore, when an
old technology is assaulted by a new one, institutions are
threatened. When institutions are threatened, a culture finds
itself m crisis. This is serious business, wh1ch is why we learn
nothmg when educators aslC, Will s u ents learn mathematics
better by computers than by textbooks? Or when businessmen
ask, Through which medium can we sell more products? Or
when preachers ask, Can we reach more people through televi-
sion than through radio? Or when politicians ask. How effective
are messages sent through different media? Such questions have
The Judgmenl of Thamus 19

an 1mmed1ate~ practical value to those who ask them, but they
are diversionary They direct our attenhon away from the sen-
ous soc1al, mtellectual, an mshtutional cnses that new media
foster.
Perhaps an analogy here will help to underlme the point. In
speaking of the meanmg of a poem, T. S. Eliot remarked that
the
ch1ef use of the overt content of poetry 1 "to atisfy one habit
of the reader, to keep h1s mmd diverted and qUiet, while the
poem doe 1t work upon h1m. much as the Imaginary burglar
IS alway provided with a b1t of mce meat for the house-dog."
In other words, m a kmg the1r practical que bons, educators,
entrepreneur , preachers, and polihc1an are like the house-dog
munchmg peacefully on the meat wh1le the house is looted .
Perhap orne of them know thi and do not especially care.
After all, a mce p1ece of meat, offered graciously, does take
care
of the problem of where the next meal will come from . But for
the re t of u , 1t cannot be acceptable to have the house invaded
without prote t or at least awareness .
What we need to consider about the computer ha nothmg
to do w1th it effiaency a t achmg_ tool. We need to know

tn what way it 1 alterin our conception of learrung, and how, }r
m conJunction with televiSion, 1t undermme the old 1dea of
school Who cares how many boxe of cereal can be sold v
1
a
felev1 Jon? We need to know if televiSion changes our concep-
tion of reality, the relationship of the nch to the poor, the idea
of happme s 1t elf A preacher who confine h1m elf to consider-
mg how a medium can mcrea e hi audience will mi s the
Sigmficant que hon. In what ense do new med1a alter what
1
s
meant by religion, by church, even by God? And 1f the
pohtic1an
cannot thmk beyond the next elechon, then we must wonder
about what new med1a do to the 1dea of pohbcal organization
and to the conception of c1hzensh1p
. To help us do this, we have the Judgment of Tharnus who
m the way of legends, teaches us what Harold Innis, in hi~ way:
20 Technopoly
tried to. New technologies alter the structure of our ·n~t~:

the thin_gs we.. think about. They alter the character of our
symbols: lhe thmgs we think w1th. And they alter the natur of
community: the arena m which thoughts develop. As Thamus
spoke to Innis across the centuries, it is essenbal that we listen
to their conversation, join in it, revitalize it. For something has
happened m America that is strange and dangerous, and there
is only a dull and even stupid awareness of what it is-in part
because it has no name. I call it Technopoly.
2
From Tools to Technocracy
A mong the famous aphorisms
from the troublesome pen of Karl Marx is his remark in The
Poverty of Philosophy that the "hand-loom gives you society
with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial
capitahst " As far as I know, Marx did not say which technology
gives us the technocrat, and I am certam his vision did not
include the emergence of the Technopolist. Nonetheless, the
remark IS useful Marx understood well that, apart from their
economic implications, technologies create the ways in which
people perceive reality, and that sue ways are e ey to
understanding diverse forms of social and mental life. In The
German Ideology, he says, "As mdividuals express their life, so
they are," which sounds as much like Marshall Mcluhan or, for
that matter, Thamus as it is possible to sound. Indeed, toward
the end of that book, Marx includes a remarkable paragraph that
would be entirely at home in Mcluhan' s Undersfandmg Med1a .
"Is Achilles possible," he asks, "when powder and shot have
been invented? And is the Iliad possible at all when the printing
press and even printing machines exist? Is it not inevitable
00101001020010300104001050010600107001080010900110
Good Leadership

Good leadership is important for quality improvement
processes, customer relationships, employee retention, and
overall organizational processes. A good leader has several
characteristics, including balanced commitment, positive role
model, communication skills, positive influence, and
persuasiveness. However, each leader may have a personally
distinct style of leadership. In this discussion, you will explore
the importance of leadership and the various leadership styles.
Respond to the following:
· Discuss each of the following characteristics as they relate to
quality leadership:
· Balanced commitment
· Positive role model
· Communication skills
· Positive influence
· Persuasiveness
· Analyze and explain which of these characteristics will be the
most difficult to achieve for good leadership. Support your
rationale with research and your experience.
· Select any two of the following leadership styles and compare
them in terms of effectiveness:
· Participative
· Goal oriented
· Situational
· Explain how leaders can (and should) influence the results of
efforts to improve quality and explain how the leaders can be
impacted by those efforts.
· If you have to develop your personal distinct style of
leadership, describe which attribute you would inculcate in your
behavior. Support your rationale with an example situation in
which that attribute would be highly effective.

SCAN0085SCAN0086SCAN0087SCAN0088SCAN0089
This chapter will
prepare you to:
• describe the major events
and general trends m
media history
• recognize the milestones in
the development of human
communication
• understand the role that
these advances played
m prompting s1gn1ficant
changes in our culture
and society
• learn that the emergence
of new communications
advances changes but
does not make extmct
those communications that
came before

• understand that each
advance m communica-
tion increases our power
to convey and record
mformation
Th1s modern-day storyteller keeps alive the oral culture of our
ancestors and mtroduces
another generation to the art of verbal communications.
T
he historical and cultural contexts of med1a are Important
because h1story tends to be cyclical. Th1s fact has been
apparent
for cen_tunes. Many anc1ent CIVIlizatiOns relied on
storytellers to hand down the history and culture of the1r
soc1ety so that
they m1ght learn from the past. The same IS true for modern
society· Knowing what happened many years ago might help
us understand what is go1ng on now. For example, when rad1o
f1rst started 1n the 1910s and 1920s, 1ts future was uncertain .
Many
thought radio would compete w1th the telephone and telegraph
as a means of sending messages from point to po1nt, while
others
saw radio's future 1n av1at1on, prov1d1ng beacons for aircraft.
The f1rst organ1zat1on to recogn1ze rad1o's Importance was the
m1litary; the U.S Navy led the way dunng World War I After
the war, as interest in the new med1um Increased, a totally new
funct1on emerged Rad1o was used to broadcast 1nformat1on
and

entertainment to a mass aud1ence . Many 1nd1V1duals and
organizations scrambled to make use of th1s new means of
commumca-
tlon the telephone company, newspapers, businesses, and even
un1vers1t1es. None had any clear idea how radio broadcasting
would pay for 1tself Eventually radio became a commercial
med1um, dom~nated by b1g bus~ness. that 1n less than 10 years
reached
an aud1ence of 50 million. Radio changed Amenca 's news and
entertainment hab1ts and became a med1um whose influence on
popular culture is still being felt.
Compare radio's development w1th that of the Internet, which
was started by the Department of Defense to 1mprove military
commun1cat1on When f1rst developed, the Internet was
env1s1oned as a means of po1nt-to-p01nt commumcatiOn It
gained popu -
lanty through the efforts of sc1ent1sts and amateur computer
enthusiasts. When the World Wide Web and newsgroups offered
a
place where anyone could post messages and reach a large
potential aud1ence, bus1nesses, educational orgamzations,
govern-
ment agencies, and individuals all scrambled to stake out a s1te
. Everybody is currently trying to figure out how to make Web
sites
profitable . Will the Web eventually become pnmanly a
commercial med1um dominated by b1g bus~ness? (We're
already see1ng
signs of this .) Will1t change the way we get our news and
entertainment? (Probably.) What sort of cultural impact will1t
have?
(Th1s may take a wh1le to determine .) H1story may help us
answer these questions.
You have probably heard the old JOke about the guy who was

annoyed because he couldn 't see the forest because of all the
trees, or couldn 't see the blizzard because of all the snow, or
couldn 't see the c1ty because of all the tall bu1ld1ngs (you
prob-
ably get the 1dea by now) Well, sometimes 1t can be hard to see
history because of all the names, places, dates, and events .
Consequently, th1s chapter steps back and takes a broad v1ew
of media h1story, emphasiZing maJor events and general trends.
Specifically, th1s chapter discusses seven milestones 1n the
development of human communication printing, telegraph and
telephone, photography and mot1on pictures, rad1o and
televiSIOn, digital media , mob1le med1a , and soc1al media
(see Figure 3-1 ).
Th1s overview of the h1stoncal and cultural context of mass
commun1cat1on w1ll supplement and make more meaningful
the
spec1f1c h1stones of the vanous med1a presented 1n Parts II
and Ill of th1s book.
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Radio: sending a message or providing signal
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52
FIGURE 3-1 Medta Ttme Ltne
Printing
Part 1 The Nature and Htstory of Mass Communtcatton
Photography/
motion pictures
Telephone/
telegraph
Radio/TV
Digital media
Mobile media
l locial media
~~~~--~~--~~~~~ A.D. 1500 A.o.1800 A.0.1900 A.O. 2000
Before Mass Communication
Language de,·eloped ab ut 200,000 ear ago and led to the
development of an oral
culture-one that depended upon the poken word. uch a culture i
trem ndou I
d pend nt on memory. The hi tor and folk! re of th culture wa
tran mitted b indi-

"idual who memoriz d larg amount of information and recited it
to tho e in th next
generation who, in tum, pa d it on to their off pring. Becau e
there i a prac_tical limit
to" hat one per on can remember, the grmvth of information and
knowledge m an ora l
ciety wa low.
human deYeloped further, it b cam hard r to rei on oral
communication to fulfill
oci ty ' communication n ed . Th need to keep more detailed,
permanent and ace -
ibl record purred the ne t big de'elopment in communication-
writing.
riting probabl de eloped in Sumeria (pre ent-da Iraq) about 3500
B.C. A few hun -
dr d ear later other tern of writing prang up in Egypt and China
. The emergence
of the written word had man implication for early ocieti . It
created a pri il ged
cia -tho e who could read and write-that had greater acce to
information, which led
to greater acce to pow r. Information wa recorded on croll ore
entually bound into
b . Books and croll were tored in librarie , perman nt repo itorie
of knowledge th a t
ndured from one generation to the ne. t. Writing helped e tabli h
empire by making it
ea ier to keep record and to coordinate the mo ement of armie .
Boo became more numerou during the Middle Age . Mo t were
hand-copi d by
cribe or monk working in mona terie . A trad and travel increa

ed, the demand for
information grew. Univer itie were founded in Pari around 1150
and in Oxford a few
y ar later, making the demand for book even greater. There were
not enough monk or
crib , however, to meet the demand, and book became xpensi e
and e en more of a
medium of the elite.
Thi ituation changed drama tical! around 1450 with th invention
of the printing pr
and mo'able type-the fir t of the communication mile tone that
we will examine.
Printing
Th invention of printing i actual! a tory of many inv ntion . One
of the wa th
dev lopment of paper b th Chin . China wa a! o re pon ibl for
the d v lopm ent
of block printing---character outline w re carved out of a block
of wood, and th ra i d
parts w re inked and pre d again t a piece of paper. Th olde t sur
i ing block-printed
~ook .Va publi hed in 868. The Chine e al p rf ctcd a tern of
movable type, u in g
ftr t cia and later block of w od f r indi idual character . The
Korean were xp ri -
menting with moable metal typ by th beginning of th 15th
century .
The n~xt m~jor invention occurred in Germany, wher J hann
Gutenberg i ge ne r-
ally cr dtted wtth developing a printing pre that u ed movabl
metal typ . Gut nb e rg

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Chapter 3 H1 storical and Cultural Context
53
Johann Gutenberg
was a wine con -
noisseur as well
as a metallurgist.
H1s design for the
pnnting press was
borrowed from a
s1m ilar device used
m wine making .
publi hed hi famou Bible around 1453, and
hi new printing m thod quickly spread aero
Europe. Only 30 year after Gutenberg' Bible
appeared, th re were printing pre e in more
than 110 town in w tern Europe alone. The
total increase in the number of book avail-
ab le in Europe is impo sible to calculate, but
it i probably afe to ay that by 1500 there
were hundred of time more book available
than in 1450. A book proliferated, their co t
went down. Although till expen ive, book
were no long r the exclusive po e ion of
the very rich. The printed book could now be
afforded by tho e who were imply relatively
prosperou .
The con equence of the printing revolu-
tion are o far-reaching and extensive that

it is im po ib le to di cus all of them. Mo t scholars seem to agr
e, however, on the
mo t ignificant resu lt .
• Effects of the Gutenberg Revolution
Th e p rin ting pre facilitated the d velopment of vernacular
(everyday) language aero
the European continent. Mo t of th pre-printing pre , hand-
lettered books had been
wri tt n in Latin-the language of th Catholic Church and of
higher education. Reading
the e work th refore required the knowledge of a econd
language, which re tricted
p o tenti a l readersh ip to the educated elite. Many early printer
, however, recognized that
a broa d r market for their book would be available if they were
published in French,
G r man, or English. Many print r al o f It closer tie to their
home country than to the
church, fur ther encouraging th printing of books in native
language . This trend had
o ther con equences. Bodie of information now became more
acces ible to more people,
fur ther encouraging the growth f literacy, and, in turn,
prompting more books to be pub-
li hed. Fina ll y, the u e of the ernacular probably helped pave
th way for the nationali m
tha t wept Europe in ucceeding centurie .
The printing pres played a r le in the religiou upheaval that
wept Europe in the 16th
century. Before the pr , tho e cl ric who disagreed with the
doctrine and policie of
the chu rch had limited channel for expr ion. Handwritten copie
of their view were

f w, had limited circula tion, and could ea ily be cen ored or
confi ca ted by authoritie .
Th itu ation wa forever chang d aft r Gutenberg. Th ologian and
religiou r former
Mar tin Luther's writing w re tran lat d from Latin into the v
macular, printed a pam-
p hi t , and di tributed all ov r Europe. It ha been e timat d that
it took onl a month
for h i famou inety-fi e Th e (the on he nail d to th church door
in Wittenberg,
erman ) to be diffu ed aero Europ . One of hi later pamphlet old
4,000 copie
in a month . De pite effort b th church to confi cat and bum
Luther' writing , th
Ref rm a tio n mov ment continued . In addition, the printing f
th Bible in the ernacular
m ea nt tha t indi idual now had direct acce to the cor f their r
ligiou beli f tern.
Th e Bible co uld b read direct! and int rpreted individuall ; ther
wa no need f r cl ri-
ca l int rv ntion . Thi increa ed access to inf rma tion fur th r w
ak n d the power of the
a th olic hu rc h and h lped the pread f Prote tanti m.
M reover, the arriva l of printing p d d up the publication of
cientific re arch.
lth ugh it would till be con ider d ag nizingl low in the ra f e-
mail and th
Int rne t, printing a book f cientific finding to k far le time than
it did when manu-
crip t wer h ndwritten. Printing al o n ured that id ntical te t
would b read b
cienti t in diff rent countri and h lp d th m build n th w rk of
ther . Galileo and

w t n mad th ir contribution to ci nee in the 17th c ntur , after
advance in 16th-
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54 Part 1 The Nature and H1story of Mass Communication
The printing pre ev n helped e ploration. The tra 1 of the ~iking
.ar.e little
k.nown , due in part to the fact that the e plored during a time
when .It ':"a difficult to
record and publicize their e ploit . Columbu i ited Americ.a
after pnnt~g de eloped,
and hi deed were widel known in Europe a ear after hi return .
Prmted accounts
of the di CO'erie of earl explorer found a read audience among
those eager t~ find
wealth and/or bring religion to the ew World . Man . ea~ly de
eloper pubhs~ed
glowing (and ometime overl optimistic) account of hfe m the
new land , hopmg
to promote inve tment and help bu ine . The journey of the
~a~ly voya~ers were
helped by printed book that contained na igational and
geographic mformatwn about
the merica .
Further, the printing pre had a profound effect on the ~r~wth
of.scho.lar hip and
knowledge. Wherea acce to handwritten te tbooks wa d.Ifficult,
~ver Ity stu~ents
now had printed text . (Think how hard it would be to take thi
cour e If everybody m the
cla had to hare ju tone te tbook.) A the number of book increa
ed, so did the number
of tudent who tudied at a uni er it . Literacy increased further .
Interest in the cla sical
work of Greece and Rome wa revived a they appeared in printed
book that were read
by man . Book ba ed on the cholar hip of other countries
appeared. The advances in

mathematic made by the Indian , Muslims, and Arabs were dis
eminated. Without the
printing pre s the Renai ance of the 16th centur might not have
occurred.
Final! , the printing pre led to the di semination of what we
would today call
new . A will be di cu ed in Chapter 4, newspapers prang up in
Europe at the begin-
ning of the 17th century. The e early publication were primarily
concerned with
foreign new . It wa n't long, however, before the e paper
focused on domestic news
a well. Thi development did not it well with some monarchies,
and government
attempt to uppre or cen or news content were not unusual. It
took until the end of
the 17th century toe tabli h the notion of a press free of
government control (more on
thi topic in Chapter 4). The early newspapers made government
and political lead-
er more visible to the public and helped create a climate for
political change in both
Europe and America.
• Technology and Cultural Change
Before leaving thi topic, we hould note that it i easy to ascribe
too much significance
to the printing pre s, to as urne that the printing pre s was the
prime mover behind all
the effect mentioned. Such a view is called technological
determinism-the belief that
technology dri es hi torical change. A more moderate position
suggests that technology
function with variou social, economic, and cultural forces to
help bring about change.

Printing did not cau e the Reformation, but it probably helped it
occur. And vernacular
language were growing in importance before Gutenberg, but his
invention certainly
helped them along. In any case, the birth of printing marks the
beginning of what we have
defined a mass communication, and it is certainly a momentous
event in Western history.
The next centurie brought further refinements to printing. A
metal press was devel-
oped by the late 1790 ; team power to drive the pre s was added
shortly thereafter .
Advance in printing technology helped usher in the penny pres ,
a truly rna s newspa-
per ( ee Chapter 4). A better grade of paper made from wood
pulp came into use in the
! ? , about the .same time as the Linotype machine, a device that
could compose and
JU tify a whole line of metal type . Photoengraving brought
better visuals to the paper
in the 1890 , a did the development of halftone photography a
few decades later. Hot-
metal type gave way to photocomposition and off et printing in
the 1970s and 1980s,
and the.co.mputer u hered in an age of relatively cheap de ktop
printing a few years
later. Pnntmg ha changed a great deal over the years, but its con
equences are till very
much with us.
The. next ~o com.n:unication milestone occurred during what
many have called the
age of mvenhon .and di co ery, the period roughly encompa sing
the 17th-19th centuries.
'J!'e rea on ~ehind the many achievement of thi period are

everal. The great explora-
tion of prevwu centurie had brought different culture together,
and cholar were
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Chapte r 3 H1stoncal and Cultu ral Co ntext
55
able to hare ideas and concepts. Further, there was a change in
the way people gener-
a ted knowledge itself. The traditional authority of the Catholic
Church was eroding, and
in tellectual looked less to faith and revelation as a ource of
knowledge and more toward

rea on and ob ervation. Philosophers such as Bacon, Descarte ,
and Locke argued for
sys tem a tic research ba ed on what the enses could perceive. In
addition, scientific soci-
etie in Italy, France, and Great Britain helped advance the
frontiers of knowledge. And,
as alread y mentioned, the printing press helped distribute new
of current discoveries to
all, prom p ting o thers to achieve new break throughs.
Whatever the reasons, these three
cen turies saw uch advances as Galileo' use of the telescope and
notion of a heliocentric
solar ystem, the theory of blood circulating through the body,
ewton' theory of gra vi-
ta tion, the roo ts of modem chemistry, the utilization of
electricity, and the discovery of
m icro copic bacteria. Inventions came along at a dizzying rate:
the s team engine, the loco-
mo tive, the plow, the internal combustion engine, the
automobile, the sewing machine,
th e d ynamo, and a host of others . ot surprisingly, the field of
communication also saw
m ajor d evelopments, as the next two milestones demonstrate.
Conquering Space and Time:
The Telegraph and Telephone
It is appropriate that we spend some time discussing the
telegraph and telephone, two
rela ted technologies that presaged many of the features of
today 's media world . For
ins tance, the telegraph harnessed electricity; it demonstrated
the technology that w ould
even tu ally be used in radio. It was al o the first medium to use
digital communication
(d ots and dashe ). The telephone, with its interconnected
network of wires and swi tch-

board s, in trod uced the same concept now at the core of the
Internet: Everybod y wa
linke d to everybody else.
A Development of the Telegraph
It i difficult for people raised in an age of cell phones, cable
TV, fa x machines, e-mai l,
and th e Internet to appreciate the tremendous excitement that
greeted the development
of the tel graph. Before the appearance of the telegraph in the
early 19th century, me -
sage could travel only a fast a the faste t form of transportation
(with some minor
excep tion ). A messenger on hor eback would clop along at
around 15-20 mile per hour.
A train carrying acks of mail could tra el about 30 mile per
hour. The faste t form of
me age tran por ta tion wa the carrier pigeon, which could co er
more than 35 mile
per hour. Then along came the telegraph, which ent me age
traveling o er wire at
the almo t unbelievable speed of 186,000 mile per econd, the
peed of light it elf. o
wonder that, when it fir t appeared, the telegraph was de cribed
a the great "annihilator
of time and pace. " It was the fir t device that made po ible in
tantaneous point-to-point
communica tion at huge di tance .
The techno log nece sar for the te legraph date back to the di co
ery of electricity .
Many arl y in n tors realized that electricity could be u ed to
end me age impl
by varying the time the curren t was on and off. E perirnent
with earl ver ion of the

SOUND BYTE
telegraph (telegraph come from Greek word meaning " to
wri te at a di tance") wer performed in the late 1700 . B
the 1 30 and 1840 , workab le telegraph y tern had been
Skeptic
Some were skeptical about the benefits of the tele -
graph. Maine might be able to talk to Texas, but, as
Henry Dav1d Thoreau pointed out, what if Ma ine and
Texas have nothing important to talk about?
de eloped in England and the United State .
Samuel Mor e wa the principal force behind the cre-
ation of the t legraph in merica . Hi device con i ted of
a ending ke , a wir , and a receiv r that made mark on
a pap r tape in concert with change in the electrical cur-
rent. Later er ion did away with the paper tap and 1 t
th opera tor read me ag b li tening to the click made
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56
After 155 years 1n the telegraph busmess, Western Umon has
pulled the plug The yellow telegram w1th words typed on
stnps of paper no longer ex1sts. In January 2006 the company
discontinued 1ts telegram serv1ce
Western Union started sending telegrams back 10 1851
when 1t was called the MISSISSippi Valley Pnnting Telegraph
Company It took the Western Un1on name after it acqUired
a number of competmg telegraph serv1ces For decades the
telegram brought news, both good and bad, to millions of
Amencans. In 1929 alone, Western Union handled more than

200 million messages
Advances 1n technology, however, ensured the tele-
gram's dem1se Faxes and cheaper long-d1~tance teleph?ne
rates prov1ded alternatives. The nse of e-ma1l, text messagmg,
and mstant messages was the last straw.
Western Un1on, however, will st1ll be around. The com-
pany has refocused 1ts efforts mto the financial area . Its
formal name is now Western Un10n Financial Services, and it
specializes 10 money transfers for businesses. Interestingly,
the company chose to announce the end of its telegram
service by postmg a not1ce on 1ts Internet site, taking advan-
tage of the medium that helped make the telegram obsolete.
by the receiver. To implif me age tran mi ion, Mor e developed
a code con i tin g
of dot and da he that i till in u e today .
Mor e demon trated hi device in the late 1 30 and eventually
received a grant from
the government to continue hi work. He con tructed a line
between Baltimore and
Wa hington, D.C., and opened the nation' fir t t legraph er ice
with the famou s me -
age "What hath God vaought?"
.A. The Cultural Impact of the Telegraph
Public reaction to the new machine wa a combination of awe
and amazement. The tele-
graph wire that wayed between pole were called lightllillg lines.
The early telegraph
office et out chair o that pectator could watch a me age came in
from di tant
citie . orne people refu ed to belie e that the new invention
worked until they tra eled

to the ource of the telegraphic me age and verified it with the
ender. Some were afraid
that all that electricity flowing around above them po ed a
danger to their health, and they
refu ed to walk under the wire .
De pite the e fear the telegraph grew quickly, and lightning line
oon cri -cro ed
the nation . By 1 50 almo t ever town on the expanding We tern
frontier could communi-
cate with every other city . Maine could talk to Texa at the peed
of light. By 1866 a cabl
had been laid on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, linking Europe
and America . Four years
later, the overland wire and under ea cable carried more than 30
million telegraphic
me age (telegram ).
The telegraph wa changing communication at about the arne
time another invention
wa changing tran portation-the railroad . Intere tingly, the
telegraph wires generall y
followed the railroad track , and tationma ter were often the fir t
telegrapher . The
telegraph made it po ible to keep track of train location and
coordinate the complex job
of hipping good to variou part of the country-particularly to the
West. The telegraph
helped the train bring ettler to the frontier and played a role in
the country' we tward
expansion.
The conduct of war wa al o changed by the telegraph. Troops
could be mobili zed
quick! and moved, u ually by railroad, in re pon e to tactical and
strategic develop-

ment . The ignificance of the t legraph for the military wa
demon trated many times
during the Civil War.
Mor e' invention had an impact on commerce a well. It ped up
communication
between buyer and eller , reported tran action , and organized
deli erie . In tant com-
munication brought about tandard price in the commodity
markets. Before the tele-
graph th_e price of ~orn aried with local market condition and
might be everal d liar
che~p~r m, ay, Chicago than in St. Loui . After the telegraph
connected all market , local
vanation were evened out.
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Chapter 3 H1stoncal and Cultural Context
57
Alexander Graham
Bell demonstrates
a version of his
telephone for
representatives
of the busmess
community. Bell
and his colleagues
eventually received
30 patents for
telephone -related
inventions.

Further, a we will di cu in more detail in Chapter 4, the
telegraph greatly
nh a nced n w paper ' ability to tran mit new . Information from
di tant place had
p revio u ly taken week to reach th n w paper office. With the
telegraph and Atlantic
ca bl e, even n w from Europe could mak the next day' edition.
ewspaper publi h-
e r were q uick to r cognize the potential of thi new d vice and
used it heavily. Many
inco rporated th word "Telegraph" into their name . The
telegraph al o helped the
for m a tio n of news agencie , or wire services a they were al o
called. The A ociated
Pre made great use of the expanding telegraphic ervice to upply
new to its cu tom-
r . Fina ll y, the telegraph changed the style of reporting.
Because the early telegraph
co m pani charged by th word, new torie became horter . Rather
than wordy,
reflecti e, and interpretive report , coop , breaking new , and the
bare fact began to
ch arac t riz n ws reports .
.A Government and Media
The telegraph also set the precedent for the relation hip between
the government and
large m dia companie . In many other countrie , since the
telegraph wa used to deliv-
er mes age , it seemed an extension of the post office, and the
government agency that
a u med re ponsibility for the po tal ervice al o admini tered the
telegraph . However,

th i model wa not followed in the United State . Although some
in the government
en dor ed a federal takeo er of the telegraph y tern, the
prevailing entiment was in
favor of private, commercial de elopment. By the end of the
19th century, telegraphic
commu n ication was dominated by one company, We tern
Union. A we will see in later
ch ap ter , other rna media-motion pictures, radio, televi ion-
were al o de veloped
a priva te rather than go ernment enterprise and were dominated
by one or a few
large companies .
.A A Change in Perspective
Ano th r con equence of the telegraph wa subtler and harder to
de cribe. In some way
the te legraph changed the way people thought about their
country and the world. By
era ing the con traints of pace, the telegraph had the potential to
function as an in tant
linkage device (see Chapter 2) that tied people together. Mor e
wrote how the telegraph
wo uld make a neighborhood of the whole country. Philadelphia
new paper, hortly
after the ucce ful demon tration of the de ice, wrote that the
telegraph de troyed the
no tion of "elsewhere" and made everywhere "here ." The paper
declared that the tele-
grap h would "make the whole land one being." An article in a
magazine of the period
was even mor expan i e: The telegraph "bind together by a ital
cord all nation of the
ear th ." It may no t be too much of an ov r tatement to contend
that the telegraph intro-

duced the notion of a global village that wa to be
populariz d a century later by Mar hall McLuhan.
It created a en e of unit among merican and
encouraged them to think in national and interna-
tional term .
The tel graph wa joined b a companion in en-
tion , the telephone. Lik the Mor in ention the
t leph ne conquered tim and pace and had the
added advantage of requiring no pecial kill , uch
a Mor e code, for it u . It tran mitted the human
voice from point to point. There wa orne confu ion
o er the preci e rol th t lephone would pla in ci-
ety, but the n tion of linking phone u er b wire
and th development of the witchboard eventuall
made it po ible to connect on place with man oth-
r . Thi arrang m nt h lped the telephone become
a fi tur in bu ine and h me aero the nation.
Th t 1 phone mad private commLmication ea ier to
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58
In the camera
obscura a small
openmg containing
a lens produces
an mverted and
reversed 1mage of
an object. Many
art1sts used the
camera obscura
to help them draw
precise 1mages of
people, landscapes,
and buildings.
Part 1 The Nature and History of Mass Communication
achieve. It wa now po ible for people to con er e away from the
watchful eyes of pa r-
ents, bo e , and other authority figure . Finally, like the
telegraph industry the telephone
indu try would be dominated by a large corporation, AT&T,
which would eventually gain
control of We tern Union .
In urn, the telegraph and the telephone enabled people to
communicate over vast
di tance in what we now call real time and had a far-reaching
impact on the political,
economic, and ocial development of the United State and the

rest of the world. We will
di cu thi impact in detail throughout the book. In many ways it
is still making itself
felt toda .
Capturing the Image: Photography
and Motion Pictures
The telegraph and the telephone drew upon advance in the
cience of electricity. The nex t
communication advance we will examine could not ha e
occurred without ad vances in
the field of chemi try .
.A. Early Technological Development
Two thing are required to permanently tore an image. Fir t,
there mu t be a way to focu
the image on a urface. Second, the surface must be permanently
altered a a re ult of
expo ure to the image. The fir t requirement wa fulfilled in the
16th century with the cre-
ation of the camera ob cura, a dark chamber with a pinhole in
one wall. The light rays tha t
entered the chamber through the mall hole projected an image
on the opposite walL The
econd requirement took longer to achieve. In the 1830 two
Frenchmen, Jo eph iepce
and Loui Daguerre, experimented with various sub tance that
changed upon expo ure
to light ray . Silver iodide provided the best result , and
Daguerre sold thi discovery to
the French government. An English dentist, William Fox Talbot,
working at about th e
arne time a Daguerre, refined the process by capturing hi
images on paper in the form

of negative , permitting copies to be made. Other ad ance
quickly followed , including
the u e of flexible celluloid film. George Eastman's company
introduced the Kodak box
camera in the 1890s with the slogan "You press a button. We do
the rest. " The Kodak wa
de igned for the mass market. Amateur photographer imply
loaded a roll of film in the
camera, aimed the camera, pre ed the button, and then ent the
film off to Kodak to be
developed and printed .
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Chapter 3 Historical and Cultural Context
59
Mathew Brady's
famous 1864 photo
of a war-weary
Abraham Lincoln .
Part of this portrait
was later used on
the five-dollar bill.
_., Photorealism and Mathew Brady
There were everal long-range consequences
of these technological advances. Early photos
(called daguerreotypes) required long exposure
times, rnaldng them particularly suitable for por-
traits, for which the subject could remain still.
These early portraits provided a way to preserve

and humanize history. Our images of George
Washington, for example, are from paintings
that show him in an idealized manner, usually
in noble poses rnaldng him appear distinguished
and powerful. Our images of Abraham Lincoln,
however, come from the many photographs that
were taken of him during his term in office. The
early photos, taken around 1860, showed him
in flattering poses. The later photos, taken after
years of war, showed a man grown visibly older,
with lines creasing his forehead and tired eyes.
The Civil War was the first American war to be photographed
extensively. Before the
camera the public's view of war was probably shaped mostly by
paintings and etchings
that showed magnificent cavalry charges and brave soldiers
vanquishing the enemy, not
the horror and carnage of actual combat. Mathew Brady
persuaded the U.S. government
to give him access to the battlefield. (Brady apparently thought
the government would
cover the costs of his venture, but his expectations were never
met, and many of his photos
were lost.) Because early photography was not able to capture
action scenes, Brady wa
limited to photographing scenes of the aftermath of a battle.
These images, however, were
powerful enough. In 1862 Brady's colleagues photographed the
battleground at Antietam
just two days after the battle and before all the dead had been
buried . The resulting photo-
graphs were the first to show the actual horrors of war. When
the photos went on view in
a ew York gallery, they caused a sensation. The carnage of
battle was revealed to all. A

Oliver Wendell Holmes remarked, "Let him who wishes to know
what war is like look at
this serie of illustrations." A hundred years later, other
communication advances would
bring cenes of horror from the Vietnam War directly into
American living room .
Photography had an impact on art. ow that a means had been
developed to preserve
realistic images, artists were free to experiment and develop
different ways of portraying
the world. Again, although it is hard to say how much of a role
photography played in
influencing painting, the impressionist, postirnpres ionist, and
cubist schools of painting
carne to prominence at about this same time. At the other end of
the spectrum, photogra-
phy it elf became a fine art, as virtuosos such as Alfred
Stieglitz, Margaret Bourke-White,
and Edward Steichen created masterpieces of graphic
reproduction.
_., Photography's Influence on Mass Culture
One did not ha e to be an arti t, however, to take pictures-
everybody could and did.
Advances in film and camera technology put cameras in the
hand of the mas es. Ordinary
people took photos of significant people, objects, and event :
marriage , new babie , new
car , pet , vacations, family reunions, proms, and so on. Photo
albums quickly became a
part of each family's library. Photography enabled each
generation to make a permanent
record of its personal history.
Advance in the printing proce , such a halftone photography,

also made it po -
sible for photographs to be published in magazines and new
paper . B the beginning
of the 20th century, dozens of illu trated dailies and weeklie
were being publi hed in
the United States. This de eloprnent created a new profe ion-
photojournalism-and
changed rnerica' conception of news. Photojournali rn reached
ne'v popularity in the
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60 Part 1 The Nature and H1story of Mass Commumcat10n
1920. ·when the pac of life quick. n d, and man ' inn vation
cropped up t~at promi. ed
to a·e time for th con ·umer- lunch count r for fa t meal , pre
~ram , w~ hillg
machin , ,·acuum clean r., and o f rth. When it cam to n w
reportmg, t~ btgge t
time- -aver wa the photograph. Reader could look at photo much
more qutckly tha n
they could read the long t t of a tor ' · .a con equet:ce, printed
c.olumn d~crea ed and
pace d voted to picture incr a ed, helpmg populanz the tablOid
and ptcture ma ga-
zine uch a Life ( hapt r 5) . . . . .
Photojoumali m had ubtler eff ct a well. Fir t, it chang.ed the
defmthon. of news 1t If.
Increa ingl y, ne became that which could be h~":'n . c~td~nt ,
n~tur~l dt a t r , d~m-
on tration , and riot wer natural photo opporturuhe . Th.i 1 ual
bta ill new reportm g
remain a topic of concern e·en toda . cond, a pho,~o hi t~ria~
Vi~ki Goldb rg p~t it,
phot graphy creat d "a communal re en·oir of image . ~ertam hi
tone e e~t were ftXed
for ,·er in the mind of the public b their photo : the fter era h of
the Hmdenbu l'g, th
oung girl creaming over the bod of a dead tudent at Kent State,
th~ ~oking rem ains
of the orld Trade Center, the toppling of the tatu of Saddam Hu
em ill Baghdad . All
of the e image hav b n etched permanent] on the national con
ciou ne .

Modern cell phone camera have made ph tographer of e
erybody, and th a t, in
turn, ha rai ed privacy i u . Cell phone with camera ar banned in
man y locker
room and health pa . earl every tate ha a law governing
photographic voyeuri m .
Compounding the problem are the man Int met ite that howcase
u er-genera ted
cont nt, uch a Flickr, Fotolog, and Phanfare. Un u pecting
people might b hocked to
find that photo taken without their knowledge or permi ion all
of a udden how up
on the Internet.
• Pictures in Motion
The technology behind photography led to the de elopment of
another way to capture an
image. The goal behind thi new mile tone, howe er, wa to
capture an image in motion.
Chapter 9 detail the early hi tor of the motion picture medium
and trace how it evol ved
from a erie of toy into a giant entertainment indu try. It i
ignificant that thi new
medium e·oh·ed hile three ignilicant trend were occurring in
the United State . Th fir t
wa indu trialization. In the Indu trial Revolution, which began
in the early 19th century
and continued into the 20th, production and manufacturing both
increa ed ignificantly.
Along with industrialization came the econd trend, urbanization,
a people moved into the
citie to be near the plants and factorie where they could find job
. In the United State one-
fourth of all Americans lived in an urban area by 1914. The
third trend wa immigration .

About 25 million people immigrated to the United State
between 1871 and 1914, and most
of them wound up in citie where they went to work in
manufacturing plants.
The culmination of the e trend wa the creation of a huge
audience that was drawn to
the new medium of motion picture . The first mov ie hou e
prang up in the citie . They
were called nickelodeo 11 , torefront that had been turned into
makeshift theater , with
uncomfortable benche or folding chair for the audience, a
tinkling piano, and poor ve n-
tilation . onethele , nickelodeon were big hit among the newly
arri ed immigrant .
By 1910 there were more than 10,000 of the e nickelodeons
around the country, and film
exhibitor and filmmaker quickly recognized that there wa a
market for filmed entertain-
ment. The motion picture bu ine had started . Film eventually
moved to plusher theater
and tried to appeal to the middle cla , but it left it mark on the
immigrant population.
Many learned the cu tom and culture of their new country from
nickelodeons.
• Motion Pictures and American Culture
The long-range impact of the motion picture lay mainly in the
area of entertainment
and culture. A the demand grew for feature-length film , onl y
very large companies
were able to come up with the money needed to pay production
co t . A will be noted
in Chapter 9, the e large companie came to dominate the
production, di tribution, a nd
exhibition of movie . Today' film indu try i controlled by global

conglomerat that till
follow many of the pattern e tabli hed in the 1920 .
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Ch apte r 3 H1stoncal and Cultural Co ntext
61
Edwin S. Porter's
The Great Tram
Robbery was the
f1rst Amencan film
to tell a story. This
classiC Western
was actually shot in
New Jersey.
Movie forever altered Ameri-
ca's lei ure time. Vaudeville oon
died out. Going to the movies
became an important social activ-
ity for the young. Saturday after-
noons that once were pent going
to parks and friend ' house
were now spent inside a dark-
ened theater.
The movie became a major
cultural in titution. Photography
and the mass-appeal new paper
had made it easier for people to
recognize and follow the fortune
of their favorite celebritie , but

motion pictures raised this pro-
ce s to a new level. Hollywood
produced cu ltural icon , the movie star . The popularity of
motion picture was ba ed on
their appeal to all social cia e . Unlike erious drama, opera, and
ballet, which appealed
to the elite, movie attracted the masses. The movies helped
bring about the notion of a
popular culture, a phenomenon who e benefits and liabilities are
till being debated.
In 1915 American poet Vachel Lind ay publi hed The Art of tlze
Moving Picture, which
ignaled the beginnings of a new popular art form. Lind ay's
book was the first of many
eriou att mpts to develop a theory of film. Although a popular
entertainment form that
blended bu ine sand art, film oon became a topic worth seriou
tudy, a trend still with
us today a videnced by the many universities that teach film a
part of their curricula .
In the early 1930s the Payne Fund pon ored a erie of tudie on
the pas ible harm-
fu l effect of attending motion picture . Thi wa the fir t of many
tudie that tried to
e tab li h just what impact film and, later, broadcasting ha e on
ociety ( ee Chapter 19
for mor detail ). The Payne Fund tudie were ignificant becau e
they marked the fir t
time the public had decided that a medium, in this ca emotion
picture , had an effect on
ociety and was de erving of seriou examination.

Finally, although film played its mo t prominent role a a
medium of entertainment, it
i important to note that it had an influence on journali m a well.
Started around 1910,
newsreel appeared weekly or semiweekly and pictured the major
event of the period .
The big movie tudios eventually controlled the production of
new reel . They tandard-
ized th content of the 10-minute reel o that audience could
expect to see omething
from Europ , orne national new , orne port , a feature or two,
and perhaps a human-
in tere t tory. The new reel were di continued in the 1950 and
1960 a pictorial jour-
nali m mo ed to televi ion. The e early news film , however,
influenced many of the
con ention and expectations of broadca t new reporting.
News and Entertainment at Home:
Radio and Television Broadcasting
Radio, the fir t medium that brought live ntertainment into the
home, would not ha e
been po ibl without ad ance in phy ic . The di co ry of
electromagnetic wa e
caught the attention of man cienti t , who looked for wa to u thi
new di covery to
end me ages. Ad ance in wir telephon in the United tat made it
po ible to end
voic and mu ic over the air and prompted T&T to fund a rna ive
re earch program in
the ar a. Radio development, howev r, wa tymied b pat nt
problem . Had it not been
for World War I, radio's developm nt might have tak n far
longer. The war had a coup!
of major con equence for radio' d v lopm nt. The U.S. av olved

the legal problem
b a er ting c ntrol over all pat nt that made po ibl maj r advance
in technolog .
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62
Mathew Brady's dec1s1on to photograph dead soldiers on the
Antietam battlefield started a controversy that persists even
today· What 1s the proper way to cover the carnage caused
by a war? Is 1t fitting to show dead Amencan soldiers on

the n1ghtly newscast or m the newspaper? How about dead
enemy sold1ers or civilian casualties?
For many years the U.S. government forbade the photo-
graphmg of dead U.S soldiers for fear that it would demoralize
the home front Franklin Roosevelt reversed that policy during
World War II when he felt that those at home had become
too complacent and too removed from the realities of combat
Accordingly, in 1943 Life magazme published a photograph of
the sand-covered bodies of three unidentifiable U.S. sold1ers
on an mvas1on beach in New Gu1nea. A short time later, John
Huston's class1c documentary film The Battle of San P1etro
contamed scenes of actual combat and resulting casualties.
Decades later, dunng the Vietnam conflict filmed scenes of
wounded and dead Gls found the1r way onto the network news
Operation lraq1 Freedom reopened the controversy.
Smce many reporters were embedded w1th combat troops,
battlefield coverage was sometimes shown hve or shortly
after 1t occurred For the most part the reporting on the part
of the U.S. med1a was restrained Th1s led some observers to
charge that the med1a were sanitizing the war and avo1dmg
1ts harsh realities. On the other hand, when USA Today pub-
lished a front-page photo of the bod1es of two dead Iraqis, the
paper received dozens of letters and more than a hundred
phone calls critic1zmg the newspaper for its lack of JUdgment
and accusing it of bemg ant1war
Media professionals expressed different viewpomts
concernmg the1r responsib11it1es m t1me of war Quoted in the
Washington Post, ABC's Ted Koppel argued in favor of show-
mg dead bodies "One thing you cannot do IS leave people
with the impress1on that war is not a terrible thing." CNN's
Walter Rodgers apparently felt the same way. Dunng a live
broadcast from outs1de Baghdad, Rogers showed the body

of a dead Iraqi soldier next to a burned-out personnel ear-
ner. Sa1d Rodgers m a story m Newsday, "You ought to show
even more than taste allows so no one has any illusions how
ternble carnage and war are."
But does the aud1ence really need to see grisly scenes
to be remmded of the horrors of war? Doesn't everybody
already know that war is hornble? Steve Capus, an NBC
news producer, contended that a newscast should commu-
nicate the reality of war without wallowing in death or injury.
News anchor Charles Gibson went further: "Any time you
show dead bodies, it is s1mply disrespectful."
John Szarkowsk1, former director of photography at
the Museum of Modern Art, offers another perspective. He
argues that ed1tors and reporters should not show every
bloody scene they come across. After a while people become
mured to the violence in the images, and each successive
scene has less power than the one before it.
This issue is still with us today. For nearly two decades
the Pentagon imposed a policy that forbade the taking of
p1ctures of the caskets of returning war dead . This rule was
relaxed in 2009 to allow photos and v1deo footage as long as
the families of the deceased agreed.
In sum, this debate will go on as long as reporters
cover wars, and journalists will continue to struggle with
their eth1cal obligations to their profession and to the
audience .
Further, a large number of oldiers went into the Signal Corp ,
where they learned the
fundamental of the new medium. When they came back from the
war, these men kept
intere t ali,•e in radio, helping popularize many amateur radio

clubs, and provided the
ba i for a ready-made audience for early broadca ting.
• Radio Broadcasting
The .hift. from u ~g radio a a point-to-point communication
device (like the telegraph)
to u mg It a. a pomt-to-many broadca ting medium caught many
by surprise. Thanks to
the populanty of early radio tations, broadca ting became a
national craze, and by the
earl 1920 the tage wa et for the emergence of another mas
communication mile-
tone. Radio wa the fir t rna s medium that brought port , music,
talk, and news into
the living room.
In ad~ition to World War I, other hi torical circumstances
influenced radio's develop-
~ent. It 1 ea y to ?verl~ok today, bu~ when radio fir t tarted out,
there wa no ystem
m place that pem:Itte~ It ~o support Itself. Many radio stations
went on the air simply
for the nove.lty of It, w1t~ httle thought as to how to fund their
operation . Significantly,
modem radw emerged m the ~oarin? Twentie , when economic
conditions were vigor-
au ~ con umer good were ea II~ avatlable, stocks were soaring,
and many people in the
bu .me world .were accumulating fortunes. In the midst of thi
climate, it was ea y for
radio broa~ca tmg. to turn to commercial for it economic ba e.
Accepting advertising
brought quick profits and was in tune with the busine s-i -good
philosophy of the time .

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Chapter 3 Historical and Cultural Context 63
Bu in s was o good, in fact, that the federal government
generally kept out of it. Radio,
howev r, needed government intervention. Overlapping signal
from too many radio
tation broadcasting on too few frequencies was a serious
problem. In 1927 Congress
created a Federal Radio Commi sion (FRC), who e main task
was to regulate the technical
side of the medium. Unlike the situation in some European
countries, the FRC and its uc-

ce or, the Federal Communication Commission, took a generally
light-handed approach
to regulation and favored the fortune of commercial broadcaster
.
It wa al o the era when newspaper chains and many other
businesses were consolidat-
ing their operations. The development of radio networks fit
nicely into this model, and it
was not long before national programming was supplied by two,
and later three, national
radio networks. Further, tabloid newspapers were capturing
readers, and Hollywood
film were booming. These trends were to have an impact on the
future of radio pro-
gramming. In concert with its evolution as an advertising
medium, radio moved toward
mass-appeal programming that provided an audience of
consumers for those who bought
commercial time on the new medium.
Ironically, the Depression of the 1930s, which did some
financial damage to radio, al o
helped its programming. Many performers from vaudeville, the
recording indu try, and
the theater, rendered unemployed by the Depression, took their
talents to radio, particu-
larly network radio . As a result, the level of profe sionali m
and the caliber of entertain-
ment improved, and the networks solidified their grasp on the
industry. By 1937 almost
every powerful radio tation in the country was a network
affiliate . ews broadcasting
came of age about this arne time, and radio soon became a more
important source of new
than the newspaper.

• The Cultural Impact of Radio
In terms of the long-term impact of this medium, several
elements stand out. First, and
most obviously, radio helped popularize different kinds of
music. One of the earl y radio
tation with a powerful signal was WSM in Nashville, which
carried broadca t of The
Grand Old Opn;, a program that introduced country music to
many thousand . Broadcast
of black rhythm-and-blues music cro sed the race barrier and
gained listeners among
whites. In more recent years radio helped popularize rock and
roll, reggae, and rap .
Radio made its own contributions to the popular culture.
Although early program
recycled many vaude ille acts, genres original to the medium
oon developed . One of
these was the soap opera, who e familiar formula later made the
tran ition into televi ion.
In 1940 soaps accounted for more than 60 percent of all network
daytime programming.
Entertainment series aimed at children introduced youngster to
jack Armstrong-The
All-American Boy and Captain Midnight. The ignificance of the
e program may be le
in their style or content and more in the fact that they signaled
the radio broadca ter '
attitude that children were a viable market and that it wa
acceptable to end adverti ing
their way. Situation comedie uch as Anw 'n' Andy and action-
adventure program uch
a Gangbu ters were other formats that per isted into tele i ion.

After a omewhat haky tart, radio news came of age in the 1930
and 1940 .
Audiences tuned to the new medium for live co erage of the
event leading up to World
War II. Listeners could hear li e the oices of world leader , uch
a dolf Hitler and
Briti h prime minister e ille Chamberlain. Commentator would
then provide what
in a more modern era would be called instant analyses of what
wa aid . Radio per onal-
ized the new :Unlike newspaper , where a byline might be the
only thing that identified
a reporter, radio new had commentator and reporter with nam ,
di tinctive ocal
t le , and p r onalitie . li t of famou radio new per onnel of the
period include
H . V. Kaltenb rn, Edward R. Murrow, and Lowell Thoma . The
e individual became
celebrities and introduced a n w component into journali m-the
reporter a tar. Thi
trend would al o carr over into t levi ion a network anchor and
reporter were able to
command multimillion-dollar alari , ju t like mo i tar and port
heroe .
Finall , like the mo ie , radio changed the wa merican p nt their
fre tim . Radio
wa th prim ource of ent rtainment and new . Familie would
faithfull gather ar und
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64
The cultural mflu-

ence of television
is sometimes
subtle Shows such
as cable network
TLC's Trading
Spaces revived
Interest m home
remodeling and
Interior des1gn
Part 1 The Nature and H1story of Mass Communic ation
the radio et in the ewning to li ten to the lat t epi od of th ir fa
orite program . By
the 1940 · hou ·ehold radto li tening time averaged more than 4
hour p r da , mo t of it
in th arly vening hour . new phra e em rged to de ribe thi period
of p ak li t ning
acth ity. It wa called prim e fllll t', another concept that pa ·ed o
r to TV.
A Television Broadcasting
Televi ion, a will be di cu ed in hapt r 10 and 11, al o had it
beginning in the 1920
and 1930 , and , a ' a the ca e with radio, a war interrupted it
development. Worl d
War II halted the growth of TV a a rna medium. Earl y tran
mitting tation w ent off
th air during th war, and TV receiver were no long r
manufactured . The technology
b hind TV, however, r ceh·ed a ub tantial boo t from th war
effort, a new di coverie
in the field of radar Vere tran lated into an improved TV
broadca t tern .
I o, lik radio, tel vi ion becam popular during an age of relati e

pro perity. After
a p riod of po h''ar ret oling, merican indu try began churning
out con umer good .
Th elf-d nial of th war ar gave wa y to a fulfillment of long-
repre ed de ire , a
merican bought new car , di hwa her , barbecue grill , and air
conditioner . But th e
TV et wa the mo t ought-after appliance. T I i ion wept the
country during the
1950 . It took the telephon about 0 ear to reach 5 percent of the
country' home ,
and the automobile did it in 49 ear . Televi ion did it in 10.
Approximately 10 million
hom had TV in 1950; b ' 1959 that number had more than
quadrupl d . While new, labor-
a,·ing appliance increa ed lei ure time, more often than not that
lei ure time wa sp ent
wa tching TV. Hou ehold furniture had to be rearranged to
accommodate the TV se t in
the li·ing room.
A The Cultural Impact of TV
Te]e,·i ion grew up urrounded b other dramatic ocial trend and
events. Ameri ca ns
were moving into the uburb , and commuting thu became a
ritual. Women were begin-
ning to enter the workforce in greater number . The 1960 saw
the emergence of the civ il
right movement, thee calation of the war in Vietnam, and the
growth of the countercul -
ture. Televi ion brought the e happening into the nation ' li ing
rooms.
Today, televi ion i in 99 percent of all hou ehold , and the et i

on about 8 hours every
da y. In an a toundingly hort period, TV replaced radio a the
country' mo t important
entertainment and information medium and became a major
cultural and ocial force.
In fact, te]e,·i ion probabl ha not been with u long enough for
us to see all of it ulti -
mate con equence . Some, howe er, are fairly obviou . Televi
ion ha become a maj or
con umer of time. Sleeping and working account for the mo t
time in a person's d ay,
but TV watching rank third . Tele i ion al o has tran formed
politic . Political conven-
tion are taged for TV; candidates hire
TV con ultant ; millions are spent on TV
commercial ; candidates debate on TV;
and o on. TV has exerted a tandardi z-
ing influence on ociety a well. Clothing,
hair tyle , language, and attitude een
on TV pervade the nation and, for tha t
matter, the re t of the world . Furthe r,
televi ion news became the mo t impor-
tant and beli vabl source of information .
And, like the motion picture, tele i ion
created a whole new slate of tars and
celebritie . It ha also b en sugg ted th a t
tel vi ion ha become an important ource
of ocialization among children and th a t
TV program in pire antisocial and othe r
unde irable b havior. (Chapter 19 review
thee id nee for the e a ertion .)
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As Negroponte predicted, th e sh1ft from atoms to b1ts contm-
ues to accelerate. It will not be long before all the traditional
tangible med1a (atoms) sh1ft to Inta ngible form (bits.) The
trend
1s unmistakable.
• Th e populanty of Sony's e- book rea der and Amazon 's
Kindle has prompted publi shers to re lease more books
1n digital form . Random Hou se announced that it was
making 15,000 of its boo ks available for download.
• The sale of CO s is in sharp declme; conversely, sales of
d1g 1tal music are increa s1n g.
• Sales and rental s of DVD s are in a downturn as Netfl1x
and other service s are offeri ng direct download of
mov1es to the home TV set.
• Microsoft and Apple are both offenng v1deo games via d1rect
download to the Xbox 360 and 1Phone and 1Pod Touch.
• Newspa pers and ma gazmes are struggling to keep the1r
paper versions alive as audiences sh1ft their readmg
habits to the Web.
Of course, th1s trans1t1on w1ll not happen overnight,
but its implications are profound Many media compames
will have to find new busmess models 1n order to surv1ve.

Advertisers will have to rethmk the1r strategies for reachmg
consumers. Media professionals will need to develop new
ways of performing their fObs . Subsequent chapters in the
book will prov1de more details on how this transition 1s trans-
formmg mass communication
Although the telegraph was the firs t to be called the "great
annihilator of time and
pace," t levi ion might be a bett r candidate for that title.
Audiences have een TV pic-
ture live from Baghdad, Earth's orbit, the moon, and Mar (well,
a live as they can be
from a place so far away). In fact, today ' TV viewer expect to
ee live reports of breaking
s torie , no matter where they are; no place eems far away
anymore.
Photography wa credited with creating a reservoir of communal
experience. Televi ion,
however, has widened and deepened that re ervoir. For example,
televi ed image of
President Kennedy's funeral, the Apollo 11 moon landing, the
Challenger explo ion, and
the p lane striking the World Trade Center have all been
indelibly impressed upon the
national consciou ness.
The Digital Revolution
In hi book Being Digital, Nichola egroponte, director of MIT'
Media Laboratory,
summed up the digital revolution a the difference between atom
and bit . Traditionally,
the rna media deli ered information in the form of atoms: Book ,
new paper , maga-
zine , COs, and DVDs are material product that ha e weight and

ize and are phy ically
distribut d . Negroponte maintain that thi i rapidly changing:
"The low human han-
dling of rno t information in the form of [recorded rnu ic], book
, maga zines, new paper ,
and ideoca ette is about to become the in tantaneou tran fer of
electronic data that
move at the peed of light. " In hort, atom will give way to bit .
A an example, con ider the difference between e-mail and
traditional paper mail.
In the traditional ystern a letter rnu t be placed in an en elop
with a po tage tamp
and gi n to the U.S. Po tal ervice, who e ernplo ee ort it, tran
port it, and deli er
it a few day !at r to it r cipient. E-mail need no paper, no po
tage, and no deliver
by po tal carrier . It i a rie of bit of information that tra el
electronically and i
d liver d in seconds rather than day . With e-mail the am me age
can be copied a
thou and tim and ent to a thou and differ nt people much more
quick! and cheaply
than with paper mail.
At the ri k of o er irnplif ing a rath r complicated topic, w can
de cribe digital tech-
nology a a t rn that ncode information- ound, text, data, graphic
, video-into a
eri of on-and-off pul e that ar u uall denoted a zero and ne .
Once digitized, the
information can b duplicat d a il and tran ported ate trern I I w
co t .
will be di cu ed in hapter 12, the computer wa th fir t devic to u
e the digital

y t rn to pr e information. Th innovation quickly pread tooth r
media . Digital tech-
n log rnak ible the pecial effects now common in rnoti n pictur
and tel i ion,
65
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66
All the communication milestones discussed 1n th1s chapter
changed the way information was stored or transmitted
Starting w1th the printmg press, they all expanded the scope
of human communication by makmg 1t possible for people
to share information w1th other people in other places or at
other t1mes This achievement prompted a rather optimistic
att1tude toward the soc1al benefits of the med1a For example,
the telegraph was viewed as a force for morality, understand-
mg. and peace. Both rad1o and TV were touted as means
of bnngmg education, h1gh culture, and refinement to the
masses Cable TV was supposed to bnng new forms of enter-
tainment to mmority groups and open the way for two-way
TV that would aid the democratic process by makmg possible
electronic polling . None of these things has yet come to pass.
Nonetheless, the Internet, with 1ts ability to connect every-
body to everybody, IS currently bemg touted as an mformation
revolution that will affect society as deeply as the printmg
press. Whether this will happen is a matter of debate, but for
now 1t m1ght be useful to ask 1f new communication technolo-
gies automatically carry w1th them social benefits. Have they
been liberatmg or constrictive?
A number of soc1al crrt1cs have pomted out that new com-
munication med1a expand the potential for freedom of expres-
Sion and have greatly enlarged the scope of human culture. The
cost of sending messages over long distances has dramatically
decreased Thanks to the telegraph, telephone, and Internet,
people can do bus1ness, soc1alize, and argue with people all
over the world. The new media have made Information available
to all And, 1f mformation 1s power, the new med1a will

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