History Narrative

A Narrative on the History of the Media

            Media has been around for the entire history of the world. It’s our means of communicating information, portraying ideas, and persuading and audience. The media are the single most important aspect to our world. Can you imagine a world without it? It’s impossible. It embodies such a wide range of forms that it is a part of every aspect in our life. It’s really almost impossible to define a starting moment of the media in our history. It’s been around for, well, all of time.

            With that being said, there is only one place we can start our journey through the media. That word is time. It’s the past, the present, and the future. It keeps the world ticking, explains when events occur, and much more. Without time we would literally have no social structure. The media works to influence people. Time does that better than anything else on this planet. It persuades us when to get up, when to eat, when to exercise, when to work and more. Many times we do these things because the clock tells us to, not because we feel like we need to. It does what the media only wishes to do.

            Moving past the very beginning, we start to get into things that are more in our vision of the media today. The first stop is religion. Religion started only one week after time, that is if you listen to the creation theory. Religion begins with the day God created man. It is arguably the most influential part of our world today and has been forever. It gets people to believe in morals, laws, and miracles. Countries and societies have been built all on the basis of religions. At the same time, wars have been fought and countries have fallen due to religion. It is super influential and has a huge impact on the way people live their life.

            Starting around 3,200 B.C we see the emergence of writing. Writing is hugely important in the world of the media. Without words, information would only be able to travel through word of mouth. In our society, we rely so heavily on social-networking, the internet, our phones, and other media devices. Information travels at light-speed because of it. While it is due to technology, the main reason it’s so helpful is because of words. Without words all we would see is pictures. While a picture is worth a thousand words, it does not clearly depict the information to each person. If in some freak event all forms of writing was eliminated from society, not only would the media fall, but the infrastructure of society would crumble. It is hugely influential and a big part of the media.

            So at this point in time, we have time, religion, and writing as our major points of media. But there was still a need for information to travel faster. Humans have this burning desire to get information as fast as they possibly can. Many different systems were developed around 2,000 B.C to get information traveling. Carrier pigeons were trained to deliver messages. The Persians developed a system of foot couriers who would run several miles to relay messages. In a sense, these were the first forms of mailing systems. Information started to move, and more people became informed. This was a huge step for the human race.

            The next step for the media was the transition from rolls to codex. This switch from scrolls to book form isn’t a huge leap but extremely influential. Imagine having to buy a psychology text scroll for class. They were impractical and just a pain to use. Books conveyed information so much easier. It was also easier for mass printing, which begins much later in life. While it was a smaller step, and we would probably be able to get on with life still in roll form, it’s still an important stop in the history of the media.

            Many people, when they hear the word media, think about advertising. I think it’s safe to say the media and advertising go hand in hand. The first forms of advertising were the Tipao in the year 615. These were government initiated, public announcements. While they started off as communications between different governments, some were made into public announcements. This could be considered a form of propaganda. A couple hundred years later, people began to put posters on store’s doors advertising different events or products. This was the start of advertising as we know it today.

            This finally brings us to the printing press. While civilizations had found ways to print, using blocks and clay, several years ago, Gutenberg was the first person to do it efficiently. He created his printing press in 1450. So while he can’t be credited with printing, he can be credited with the printing press. This made information more conveyable than ever before. It was quick, efficient, and readable. This was a huge step for the media. It marks the end of old media, and the beginning of a new era.

For more information check out my Prezi on the 50 Points of Media
To start your own research and for an even a more indepth look check out this Timeline.

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?

Presenting to the unaware.

    "Present the information so that it is useful to the unaware." I feel like this quote kind of embodies the media. If you think about it, that is there goal. To inform people of ideas and information while making them care about it. It's hard to be a popular source of media if people don't care or listen to what you have to say.

This is where the media can become a problem. Sometimes people don't want the boring true story. It becomes uninteresting. Sometimes the media beefs it up to make it more intersting. Would you rather read something about a simple car accident or a huge life threatning collision that endangered the lives of millions? I think it's safe to say we would all rather read about the latter of the two.

While we want intersting, that becomes a huge problem with the media and is a leading factor as to why it can not always be trusted. They are constantly turning mole hills into mountains in order to obtain viewers and keep them interested. Then again it's not their job to come up here and tell us the truth. More so we need to find the truth in it.

The best thing we can do is to look at the big picture to get the idea of what the true story is.

"Books are pretty heavy, but their worth it."

This quote was said in class, kind of as a joke. They are big, take up space, and can literally weigh you down. The cause of this.. Information.

When used in class it did seem pretty funny. Well duh it's a book, it's going to have some weight. But if you look at this quote you can gather a pretty big concept. Books are heavy with information. In our digital age everything is going online or in "e" form. We have kindles, nooks, and ipads to hold information. Many times people don't even get books and just look up any information they need from google.

This is when we need to remember the importance of books especially when it comes to research. Research books are, for the most part, written by people who have studied a particular field and are qualified to teach it. They are loaded with reliable facts. You can get a lot out of them, A lot of truth.

If we search everything online it get's hard to differenciate between whats fact and whats fiction. It's hard to tell what websites are credible and which have just been thrown together. If all of our books go digital, they will eventually get mixed in with the rest of the internet. They would then become apart of the fact or fiction debate. Reliable or not? This is why books are so important. They have to go through the stages of getting published and making sure the information is credible. We can almsot alway rely on the authenticity of a book compared to what we find on the internet, not saying its helpful, but a book is almost always the way to go.

So while books might be heavy, they are totally worth it.

Do we want to be like God?

"It's our inate thing to create something in our likeness."

Stop for a moment to think about some of the things scientists are working on creating today. What did you come up with? We are trying to create robots, artificial intelegince, a printer that can make anything out of carbon, self-sustaining life forms... the list goes on. But all of these link back to one thing, we want to create things with out the help of nature.

The first time this happened when was God himself decided to create. When there was nothing he decided to create people in his own likeness and create a world for us to live in. He designed nature to give us all that we should ever need and the tools to evolve.

This idea leads to many questions. My first question, Is it okay to want to "Play" god? God made us in his likeness, in doing so we are like him. It sounds goofy but think of it this way. If he made us in a way he saw himself then is it okay for us to create and try to mimic him? We are trying to play god and create things out of nothing, in our likeness. Robots is the best example. We keep trying to make them to resemble us as closely as we possibly can.

If the above is true then is it okay for us to create our own nature. Consider the idea of the digital banana. The idea that we could create a carbon printer that could print virtually anything out. Were talking food, organs, plants, and more. We are fast fowarding nature's process and trying to make it as convienent as fast food. Is this okay?

In my opinion both are okay because, God gave us the tools to do this. He gave us our brains and our power to evolve in order to make life easier. We have come leaps and bounds in medicine, treatments, technology, and several other fields. However the big question is when does it become unethical. At what point do we take the role of God to far? It's something that needs to be adressed, and soon.

The first week

So I'm going on my second week of class at the College of St. Scholastica. I don't completly know how to go about making the blog for Media Literacy but here it goes.

For the first blog I want to go over a few things.

First day of class we went over the fact that Media is a plural word. We should say it as "the media are everywhere" as opposed to "the media is everywhere." I think it's safe to say this is a hard concept for people to comprehend, however I think it's important. There are many types of media, therefore it becomes a plural word. We have the newspaper, television, radio, and internet. We can go farther to say that gossip, teachings, and everyday events are media. If it puts forth information or ideals, it becomes media. This is an important concept to understand.

Now over the last few days a few quotes were made. This includes:

"Its not my job to come up here and tell you the truth." and
"Not everything I say will automatically ring the truth."

This is important to remember. While a lot will be said in class, its up to us to make sense of it and really comprehend what it means to us. Somethings will have meaning to soem classmates while to others it will make no sense at all and they will gain nothing from it. Let's look at the digital banana for instance. It's the idea that we can carbon copy food and other necessities of life. Now to me this doesn't mean  a whole lot. It would drastically change life and therefore would be in the news and become apart of our media. I don't know if thats what im supposed to get from it but I did. Others might get something else from it.

We will see how the rest of the class goes and what more I get from it. Wish me luck!