Communication in Orality and the Advent of Writing

The speed and openness of the communication of ideas and information generally is increased even more by the appearance of the mass media, including electronic ones. In a sense mass media began in the early days of printing with broad-sheets and newsletters. Indeed printing itself eventually enabled the large-scale production of almanacs as well as of textbooks for schools, as the price decreased. That process developed yet further with the coming of the roller press in the nineteenth century, which ensured the wider distribution of newspapers and magazines whose contents ranged from the sports and leisure activities to more serious ideas of a popular kind; but academic discussion, too, increasingly took place in journals that were taken by the growing number of libraries, established earlier in monasteries, and later in universities, colleges, schools, and eventually in towns and even villages.

Electronic media further speeded up the process of transmissions, through the telephone from the 1880s for brief individual messages, to more substantial broadcasts through the radio, the cinema, and television. But for scholarly purposes the great breakthrough came with the development of communication by means of interconnected computers that enable immediate access to huge stores of information throughout the world. Those living in remote areas, away from libraries, can download material from the latest journals worldwide and keep up with the most recent developments in their topic. Indeed in some scientific fields, research workers are expected to post their findings without waiting for formal publication. The rapidity of the access to and the flow of scientific ideas promotes their application and hence the "innovativeness" of human society. The problem then becomes one of finding a way around this mass of information, for which purpose a number of "search engines" have appeared to assist with enquiries.