A consideration of the cultural impact of communication technology.
As newer generations grow up with smartphones in hand, older generations worry about the potential effects of this form of communication on their successors. Perhaps they fear a decline in social skills. Many Millenials cannot bear to make phone calls and much prefer texting or instant messaging. With seemingly endless technological growth, recurring questions regarding the cultural impact of technology loom in the background of our society; what is the relationship between technology and culture? How is our technology affecting us and the way we communicate with each other? In order to truly appreciate how communication technology has shaped our present-day society, it is first necessary to understand the beginning stages of human communication technology. According to media studies scholar, Joshua Meyrowitz, in his 2008 chapter, “Media Evolution and Cultural Change,” there are four cultural phases marked by their distinct communication technologies.
The first era was the oral society and is understood to begin roughly around the emergence of man and remained dominant until the end of antiquity. During this era, information was shared solely verbally and was only stored in one’s memory. Before the invention of writing, with seemingly no tools in which to store information communicated, people utilized stock phrases, rhythmic poetry, and familiar cadences, in order to remember the information that was transmitted. Innovative ideas and complex original arguments, however, were difficult to pass along, as they were much more, “difficult to remember (even by the people who developed them)” (Meyrowitz, 56). Individualism was basically nonexistent in concept and in practice. Within communities there were close ties and shared cultural experiences and collective knowledge and the notion of co-mingling among members from other communities was unlikely. Even after the invention of writing, in the “scribal” phase, oral communication dominated, as writing existed in the worlds of very very few people.
As some learn to read and write, people within the same communities began to lose some of their connectedness while simultaneously connecting with people from other communities, i.e. those previously conceived of as “strangers.” The transition of information into written word offered the opportunity for people to eventually be able to step back from the information at hand and think about it in perfect detail during moments other than solely the moment it was spoken. As Meyrowitz (2008) explains, “[in] oral societies, words are no objects to be viewed or held, but time-bound events, much like thunder or a scream.” That is, prior to the written word, there was likely less reflection. Words can be fleeting so allowing the words or information to be curated was powerful. Modern print culture is considered to begin following the invention and spread of the printing press. Hierarchies that surfaced in the scribal era became more obvious as literacy grew to be associated with power and societal status, as “distinctions in ‘levels’ of reading are seen as tied to natural differences of identity and status” (Meyrowitz, 59). While the modern era is seen as a step in a direction much different from the oral era, with strict linear organization and thinking valued highly, the postmodern era is seen as a step back towards the blurred boundaries and collaboration reminiscent of the oral era.
Johannes Gutenberg’s fifteenth century invention of the printing press offered the first opportunity for mass communication. Rather than written communication shared among only a select few people, particularly Monarchs and clergy in the Catholic church, information could now be more easily spread at the large scale. His new technology enabled faster and more affordable printing than scribes could feasibly provide. When just a few elites were distributing and receiving written text, the illiterate masses remained out of the loop and thus, they were left out of many opportunities. The innovation of mass communication, however, made written communication possible for more than just the few elites. The knowledge being shared became accessible to all walks of life, which inevitably led to the Age of Enlightenment, as increasing numbers of people gained access to texts and learned how to read and write, enabling the sharing of scientific knowledge and therefore the growth of our scientific progress.
Martin Luther, being the first person to use printing as a mass medium, arguably marks the beginning of a critical society. He prints his 95 complaints of the Catholic church and invited people to think, at the individual level, about his question of authority. His innovative uses of the printing press arises during the start of the accelerated spread and standardization of knowledge across, initially, Europe and eventually the world. Although the printing press did not lead immediately to the supposedly free-thinkers we consider part of the postmodern era, it did lead to a standardization of knowledge for far more people than before, narrowing the educational gap between the minority of elites and the majority of other people. With growing literacy and access to printed materials comes a surge in the development of individual thinking and a new perspective that was previously unknown to members of the oral era and limited to a minuscule percentage of the scribal era members. In the modern era, comparing perspectives, e.g. peer-reviewing scientific work, enabled progress faster than was previously possible. The four cultural phases were distinctly marked by communication technologies which has lead to the growth of humanity, for better or for worse, however, is the next question that needs addressing.
