Smarter

Last night I attended a KQED fundraiser featuring two Capitol correspondents from NBR. One of them strongly recommended that the audience of 50 plusers obtain a Twitter account and begin using it. It was a method of communication that she thought would influence daily life and change the way we interact. While I don’t mind 128 character handcuffs, I wasn’t convinced of the revolutionary promise of micro-mass communication. So, I googled back in time and found similar paradigm busters in the past.

Let’s start with Cro-Magnon man. At the time, state of the art mass media was shouting and wailing. The bandwidth however was limited and the hearing impaired were out of luck. So some bright group of cave college students struck it rich selling an IPA that produced the new, new technology of drums and buffalo horns. Known as rhythm and blues it quickly replaced the screamers and wailers who ended up unemployed and panhandling for elephant tusks. “Get a drum and horn”, the young people said, “Start sending messages. It will change your life”. “Screaming and wailing is dead”. The people blew their horns and felt smarter.

The rhythm and blues period lasted several millennia. Until one day, as an obsessive compulsive Neanderthal was rubbing sticks together in a pile of dry leaves, a flash of light arose and the leaves started to burn.. Where fire there is is smoke and soon some entrepreneurial guy created a new form of mass communication—smoke signals. “Smoke would change human behavior forever”, they said. “Light travels further than sound. No more hyperventilation or carpal tunnel syndrome”.

Campfires sprouted up all over the place. You could barbeque your mastodon meat while signaling your friends to tell what you were having for dinner. “Drums and horns are things of the past” advised the tribal leaders, “Build a fire, buy yourself a blanket and start “signaling”. The people smoked and began feeling smarter.

It only took one millennium to realize the limitations of smoke. You couldn’t send a signal after dark and carbon monoxide was killing people. That’s when the Babylonians stepped up.

Bored while smoke signaling a chatty friend, a young woman began doodling on muddy sandstone .Soon others realized that one could draw unique shapes to represent concepts and thoughts. It no longer took 10 stick figure drawings to indicate an encounter with a wildebeest, a simple set of symbols would convey the same meaning. Cuneiform was born; “Smoke-a-log era” was replaced by the more precise “Cune-igital” era. Given an ample supply of sandstone an economy grew up around the Tigris Euphrates and it soon became known as “Sandstone Valley” Every 10yrs the size of the sandstone tablets would decrease by 1/3 and the price would drop. Everyone had a Sandberry and common etching on city walls became known as “Sandbook” a place where you could post new prayers and details of your love life.

The wise men sung the praises of the new communication and told the masses “Buy a tablet, start etching—it will revolutionize your life”. The people starting scrawling and they felt smarter.

But the Babylonians patents wouldn’t be safe. Further west, another cradle of civilization was about to bust a paradigm. Egyptian farmers used papyrus reeds to wipe off the color of seed husks that they harvested. Egyptian teenagers observed this and realized that if they got the oily dark substance on their fingers and wrote on the dried papyrus, they could easily send notes in class to their friends, a task impossible with bulky sandstone tablets. Husk ink and papyrus sales skyrocketed in the souks of Cairo. The cuneiform bubble burst and with it the Babylonian-sandstone based economy. A“higher” form of media or “hieroglyphics” was born and the young Egyptians who popularized became known as “Nile-ists”. The Pharaohs proclaimed that all should begin using the new technology—“Dry same papyrus and start glyphing”. The people did and they felt smarter.

Until the Athenians intervened. An out of work high school Greek teacher became interested in the overlapping conversations that were taking place in the local plaza. He had heard of the days before symbols when people actually used shouting and wailing. Putting the two together, he created a fusion technology where people spoke together in a group and assembled to “act out” stories. These “plays” of words became a craze and soon the new method of communication. The philosophers advised the people: “Go to the theatre, join a chorus”—the spoken word is in; the written word is old school”. And the masses complied and they felt smarter.

It didn’t end there though. After a young Macedonian pumped up on steroids ran 26miles to announce a victory at the battle of Marathon, venture capitalists created Athens on Line (AOL) and athletes began carrying news and information between city states. Instant messaging was born and the experts predicted it would last 3 thousand years. “Hire a messenger, send a text message s anywhere anytime—plays and choruses are for entertainment only---messaging is the future. And the people messaged and they felt smarter.

And so the pattern would have continued right on through when a German named Guttenberg was goofing around in the office, trying to imprint his rear end on some liturgical text and discovered moveable type.

Except for those pesky Greeks. An irascible brick mason named Socrates used to hang around the Agoura in Athens interrupting speeches and bargaining sessions by an odd technique. Instead of stating like everyone else, he asked questions-about everything. Why is there air? Is truth knowledge? Why did the chicken cross the road? The old coot drove people crazy, interfering with business deals and bringing the otherwise confident Athenians into a state where they weren’t sure of anything. What goes around comes around----or does it just keeping going? Is revenge sweet or is it sour? And finally the topper----Is information knowledge or is it just information? This last one threw the philosophers and soothsayers into a panic. What should they tell the people?

You mean it wasn’t how you communicated or even what you communicated--it was the meaning of the information? You mean the medium is only the message? Not the truth? How do you get smarter? Reflect? Think? Analyze?

Panic ensued, the price of lamb and sheep plummeted, dropping the stock market to record lows. The word anxiety and stress were born and some even blamed the plague on the uncertainty. Eventually with the help of a huge Spartan defense budget, they fought off the invading Persians, started the Olympics and cemented their place in history.

So will I follow the advice of the Capitol correspondents for NPR? Do I “tweet” I to a “twitter” account and learn the smoke signals and hieroglyphics of the new 128 character language?

I will. But, when I do so, I will promise the old stone mason and his Platonic buddies that however smarter I think I feel after I “tweet” I will still take the time to ask myself what it all means. Maybe that will make me smarter.



Unpublished work © 2009 Stanford Shoor