The Start of Media?

For our media literacy "exam" we have to make a list of fifty points of media from the beginning to the printing press. It's a lot of work but it has proved to be very interesting. Going through, I started to think of all the little things that had to come together from all points in time and all over the world to get the media where it is today. Each little part had to be included, without each part contributing it would completely alter our idea of media! Here are some examples.

Autographs: Imagine life without autographs. No one signing off on documents, there own written work, and no claim to ideas. It would be impossible to know who came up with what. Autographs first appeared almost 11,000 years ago on tablets.

Written Gossip: Imagine a world with no gossip?! How would we even have media! That's what the media, as we know it, thrives on. Written gossip dates way back to 1,500 B.C when it was used in poems as a form of entertainment.

The Roll-Codex transition: Can you imagine reading the Hunger Games or Harry Potter on a scroll? I don't think anyone can. It would be highly impractical. Without the transition to our book form, we would still be buying super long rolls of literature. This happened just a couple hundred years into the 1st century. It would drastically change the course of our media.

The Printing Press: By far the biggest advancement in media. It made information accessible to vast populations at a quick and convienent rate. Without this writing for the masses would be impractical.

So what does that say for our future. Every little piece of media we add, from the typewriter to the Iphone, is going to have a huge impact on the media hundreds, if not thousands, of years from us. Everyday we are going to drastically change change the future. We need to ask ourselves, is this going to impact the future positively or negatively?