Newspapers defending Newspapers
May 18, 2009One of my favourite Twitterers, @dburrows, pointed out a very interesting article appearing in The Times today. The basic premise is that the Internet is not terribly noteworthy in the grand scheme of things and certainly shouldn’t be considered as a defining technology of our time.
David Edgerton, professor of the history of technology at Imperial College London, is quoted as saying “The Internet is rather passé . . . It’s just a means of communication, like television, radio or newspapers.”
Like speech as well, then, presumably.
The Professor quotes Steam Power and The Wheel as more fitting examples of revolutionary technology. These are, after all, technology that spawn other technology – they’re solid and tangible and can be banged with spanners. Communication, on the other hand is obviously far too much of a wishy-washy social science subject for the eminent professor to consider important. Of course, one might note that neither steam power, nor the wheel would have existed without communication, as, indeed would no other technology. But communication isn’t something an Engineer is an expert at. Especially not this particular one, I fear.
It might not be engineering, but the societal impact of communication is beyond measurement – society simply doesn’t exist without communication.
So, communication is kind of important. Revolutionary, in fact. Dare I say it, very possibly communication is the one factor that defines humanity above all others. Certainly not something worthy of the dismissal it has received in this article.
Without the wheel, I daresay the invention of the hovercraft would have come more quickly, but we’d have had to live without rollerskates. Without steam power, well, we’d probably be pretty much where we are now, with a few tweaks and changes to our power plants. Without the complex communication we capable of, we’d likely be extinct.
But within the sphere of communication, can we truly describe the Internet as revolutionary? Isn’t the point the Professor is making is that the Internet is just a progression beyond what has already been established? Does it really propel us beyond where the invention of the printing press took us?
I say it does. The Internet is the only medium to be as accessible and as instant as speech, but provide a truly global audience. Unlike speech, it can be referenced and archived. The moment I publish this (free) blog entry, it is available to everyone across the world to read, use, comment and expand upon.
The table below captures the attributes that make the Internet so revolutionary in terms of communication media.
When the wheel was first invented, one can only imagine how long that knowledge took to disseminate and improvements iterate via the channels of communication then available. The Internet makes it possible for any idea to disseminate and iterate at the speed of light. To aid this process, unlike speech, radio or television, it can be referenced again and again, instantly, universally, democratically. If that isn’t a technological revolution, then I don’t know what is.
| Medium | Barriers to entry | Distribution | ||
| Cost | Regulation | Speed | Range | |
| Speech | None | None | Instant | Very local |
| High | Low | Slow | Local/National | |
| Radio | Medium/High | High | Instant | Local/National |
| TV | High | High | Instant | Local/National |
| Internet | None | None | Instant | Global |
Beyond this, the article goes on to quote another eminent professor, Clive James.
“After Lehman Brothers crashed,” he says, “The Wall Street Journal carried an analysis that is still the best thing I have seen on the subject. But the story needed half a dozen qualified financial journalists to put it together, and masses of research that no lonely blogger could possibly do . . . This throws into relief the intractable fact that the liberty which the web offers to the individual voice is also a restriction on group effort.”
Hold on a second. Did I read this right? It is intractable fact that journalists can’t work together on the Internet? Collaboration is only possible when the output is destined for printing presses? I assume this means spurious crap becomes intractable fact when a newspaper columnist tells you so.
I’d be very interested to know where that group of half a dozen qualified financial journalists carried out their ‘masses of research’. Which library of printed materials had so quickly amassed so much data? And how did that group of journalists collaborate, exchanging ideas and thoughts quickly? Did the WSJ fly them in from all corners of the world to sit and work together in a single room?
Of course, the group of journalists used the global, instant, free communication medium of the Internet, drawing on and iterating knowledge already pinging around the world. They used the same medium to collaborate their efforts as they packaged their Internet research, before WSJ published it in both digital and paper form. Had Mr. James wished to, he could have read this interesting piece on WSJ’s website long before his antiquated, dessicated tree hit his doormat.
