Media and information systems fundamentally change societies and their power structures and dynamics. They always have. They always will. Often the changes, or at least the immediate periods of change, are highly disruptive, often painful or deadly, sometimes to tens of millions. The dream of uniting humanity through better communications is at best exceedingly incomplete.<p>That idea occurred to me a few months ago. I've been researching it in some depth, and like most good ideas, I'm hardly the first to stumble accross it. In recent memory, Elizabeth Eisenstein has pursued the idea to a greater extent than nearly anyone else, in particular in her 1980 book <i>The Printing Press as an Agent of Change</i>. Review here (full text available via <a href="https://sci-hub.cc" rel="nofollow">https://sci-hub.cc</a>):<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2779560?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" rel="nofollow">https://www.jstor.org/stable/2779560?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...</a><p>I'm aware of a number of those transitions, and there's good evidence for nearly all of the corresponding changes.<p>1. Speach and language itself: increased intra- and inter-tribal communications. Strong evidence of rapidly advancing toolmaking, including stone tools, and weapons.<p>2. Writing. Co-incident with the start of civilisation itself, cities, and agriculture. Spread like wildfire from regions in which it first developed over a period of a few centuries for the most part.<p>3. Printing. Moveable type, in Europe, corresponded with thhe Reformation, schism of the Catholic Church, and a continent-wide 30 Years War.<p>4. Incremental improvements in literacy, papermaking, and printing: the American and French revolutions.<p>5. Steam-powered, iron-framed prresses, greatly increased literacy, and much cheaper paper: the Revolutions of 1848, in which 50 nations in Europe and Latin America experienced revolutionary uprisings.<p>6. Mass media, especially radio, public address systems, cinema, audio tape recording, grammaphone, and ever cheaper and faster presses: the rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany, demagogues in the United States (Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Joseph McCarthy).<p>7. In the 1950s - 2010s, mass social movements piggy-backing on radio, mobile PA systems (bullhorns), mass music, television, CB radio, call-in radio, telephones, mimeographs, Xerox machines, Fanzines, dial-up, broadband, and mobile Internet, Web-based apps, social media.<p>Profiling, targeted messaging, and other elements operate similarly.<p>The overall dynamics are complex, and I've omitted other elements, but the overall concept seems quite strong. Many authors have commented on elements of this, though few look to the darker side. Le Bon, Mackay, Bernays, McLuhan, Chomsky, Mander, Shirky, and boyd are among those who have.