Lecture #2- Recap and Brain Crack

Good morning boys and girls. Let’s talk about papyrus.

There is no such thing as originality. Why? Because the Egyptians beat us to it. And if it wasn’t the Egyptians, it was the Greeks. Or the Romans. Or the Chinese. Or some ancient civilisation. And the really disheartening thing is that we go around thinking we’re oh so very clever, only to discover someone living thousands of years ago, without wikipedia, thought of it first.

So that’s nice.

For example, you’d think or at least, I thought, that networked culture is something reasonably new. Something reasonably innovative, as one might say. And if someone were to disagree, you’d chortle to yourself and say “well sure, people have always communicated, but this is networking. This is different.”

Yeah. No.

And so we reach week two of Making Networked Culture 2013. The week I learned how little I actually know about anything.

Let the brain crack begin.

So papyrus. I love this idea of the Egyptians finding a way to file share. Or rather, finding a way to invent files, and then share them. That’s brilliant. The egyptian society was revolutionised when they discovered how to invent papyrus, a convenient way to write things down and transport them around. Isn’t it such a beautiful thought that a little tiny thing like paper would have the ability to totally revolutionise the way people communicate with each other?
Back to my lament earlier on, I was under the impression up until recently that text-based communication was something that’s very unique to my generation, what with the prominence of online activity and digital ways of talking to each other. Email, for example. Texting for another. Facebook, twitter, instant messenger, Skype. I mean, if you want to get technical, every form of communication that involves technology is text based. Even a phone call: your voice is recorded, transformed into a series of signals or a line of code, sent flying through the air and then translated into someone else’s device back into your voice. It’s not actually your voice, but a digitally rendered impersonation of your voice.
The tech heads among you have probably just worked out how little of this stuff I actually know about, but I know enough that I find it fascinating.
Back to papyrus, the Egyptians it seems beat us to it with their own form of text based communication and file sharing. The ability to write things down and transport them easily. It seems like such a small thing, but I guess it’s so often the case that small things have the most significance. Not that small at all really, but huge. Massively huge.

My point is, that people have been networking long before the word ‘networking’ was even dreamed up (1550, for those who are interested. Or thereabouts. Although the use of it as a gerund is harder to track.)

In class we also talked about the invention of glass, starting with the phrase “the Chinese didn’t really drink much wine”.
But the significance of this, is that in China back in the day, glass wasn’t really used all that much. Meanwhile in the west, with our love for booze and looking at pretty things, glass was significant, and from this medium people discovered lenses. From these lenses, they invented telescopes, and microscopes, which I’m sure we can all agree, is a pretty big deal.

But even then, the Egyptians and Romans have the upper hand, with evidence of primitive ‘lenses‘ going back to the 1st century AD. Of course, back then they didn’t realise it had anything to do with refraction and light, but still, the concept wasn’t new when it was ‘discovered’ hundred and hundreds of years later.

I think the thing we talked about which stuck a chord with me the most was when we got onto the subject of the dark ages, when the bible could only be printed in Latin so only a select few were able to read it.
It’s ingenious really. Limit accessibility to information by setting up a language barrier. Keep people ignorant, keep opinions limited, and none shall question what you say. What a perfect way to maintain a chain of control. This was, however, ruined by the invention of the printing press, and consequently, the printing of the bible in English. Scandalous, but now people could understand it. People could question it. Knowledge is empowering, and this would signify the end of the dark ages.

We talked about other things in our lecture, but these are the things that stood out to me.

Alright, I’m going to call it quits there. Tomorrow I’ll probably continue on this train of thought (hopefully with more detail and finesse) and talk about the tutorial as well.