Writing on the Wall: History of Social Media (Tom Standage)

Lawrence Lessig argues that the world is regulated by four forces: (1) Code - what is technologically possible; (2) Law - what is legally permissible; (3) Norms - what is socially acceptable; (4) Markets - what is profitable. These forces interrelate and can be used in combination to achieve information control goals. The Statute of Anne (1709) was the legal foundation of Anglo-American copyright, created after the licensing system lapsed in 1695. The book publishing industry lobbied to get licensing back because it was the legal underpinning for their system of literary property. When copyright was passed, the agitation for licensing disappeared because the industry no longer needed licensing to protect their property rights. Before copyright existed, printers and booksellers in France and Italy sometimes benefited from the Inquisition because it was the only authority that could grant them private licenses to enforce copyright. Censorship is one of the elements of the social periodic table - it's always present in various forms and can combine with different elements. There are no societies without censorship, ranging from the Great Firewall of China to a parent deciding whether to give a book to a child.

The 15th century printing revolution transformed information flow through Gutenberg's mobile printing press and paper introduction. This enabled mass book production but created challenges for controlling content. The church and monarchy responded with censorship regimes, licensing printers for fixed periods, and establishing the Stationers Company in 1557 to govern book printing. The company gained powers to search for illegal printers, confiscate unauthorized works, and burn unregistered books, creating a private copyright system that maintained monopoly control until Parliament refused renewal in 1694.

Historical examples of information control include: France's licensing system for printing presses (only for loyalists), Spain's confiscation of printing presses for 'anti-religious' materials, the Ottoman Empire's 200-year ban on printing in the vernacular language, and Britain's pre-publication document approval system. These precedents show consistent patterns of information control across different eras.

Censorship operates as both a force of constraint and a fertile mechanism that shapes the production and reuse of literary, scientific, religious, and political works; it functions through the interplay of law, technology, and culture, and while formal censorship rarely succeeds in completely eradicating ideas, it often succeeds through inducing self-censorship among creators, as demonstrated by historical cases like the Galileo trial which transformed intellectual production rather than eliminating controversial ideas.

Freedom serves to prevent the distortion of common sense by politicians and allows people to live according to their own principles. Freedom of information, speech, and press is essential for human civilization to exist, as without the free exchange of honest information, humanity cannot survive. Freedom of speech has been progressively restricted throughout history: in primitive societies, challenging patriarchs could result in punishment; with states, criticism of rulers became dangerous; in ancient Egypt, questioning the pharaoh was particularly risky. Censorship is an ancient practice that predates printing technology, beginning when scribes altered manuscripts. With printing, censorship became more systematic. In the Russian Empire, despite encouraging literature, the government established secret orders to monitor publications. Soviet censorship operated through Glavlit, officially denied to exist, with censors placed in every publishing house. After the Soviet collapse, censorship was officially abolished, but around 2005, discussions emerged about reintroducing it. In Western Europe, freedom of information is significantly restricted: in France, it is illegal to refer to Arabs as Arabs or use the term 'Negro,' and statistics about ethnic crime rates cannot be published. Major transnational corporations like Google control information access through mechanisms resembling censorship. YouTube's algorithm systematically suppresses certain content through mechanisms like 'shadow banning,' with data showing viewership declined significantly over time despite increased content production.

Marshall McLuhan's technological determinism theory posits that the medium itself is the message, meaning communication technologies fundamentally shape human society and behavior more than the content they carry; he identified five stages of communication evolution (oral, writing, printing, electronic mass media, and digital internet age) and classified media as 'hot' (requiring minimal audience participation like television) or 'cool' (requiring active engagement like print), arguing that understanding how technology shapes our environment is essential for navigating its influence.

Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian scholar and founder of communications studies, developed media ecology—the study of how media environments shape human consciousness. His core thesis is that every medium shapes and creates the contours of human consciousness in every era. The famous phrase 'the medium is the message' means that the form of communication matters more than its content. McLuhan argued that media technologies fundamentally alter human sensory ratios, cognitive patterns, and social organization. His work traces how different historical periods are characterized by different dominant media, each producing distinct cognitive patterns and social structures.

Marshall McLuhan theorized that Western man acquired from the technology of literacy the power to act without reacting, enabling the aloof transcendence of rational man that appears wholly separate from nature. This represents a sleight of hand that erases the material contingency of this construction after the fact. Modern humanisms emerge from modern writing forms including theology, philosophy, constitutions, and declarations of rights, suggesting that humanist claims about human specialness depend on specific technological conditions.

Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian scholar who developed media ecology and is considered the founder of communications studies. His central thesis is that 'the medium is the message'—the medium itself shapes human consciousness regardless of content. He analyzed history through media evolution: oral culture (auditory dominance), manuscript culture, print culture (Gutenberg press), and now the electric age. Each stage fundamentally changes how humans acquire knowledge and perceive reality.

Technology Determinism is the theory that communication technologies fundamentally shape and determine societal structures, cultural values, and human behavior. The Toronto School of Communication, including scholars like Harold Innis (Time-biased and Space-biased media), Marshall McLuhan (The Medium is the Message, Global Village, Hot vs Cool Media), and Neil Postman (Technopoly, Amusing Ourselves to Death), argues that media technologies are not neutral tools but powerful forces that actively construct social reality, influence human perception, and determine how societies organize themselves.

Modern movements can coordinate nationally without central authority through decentralized networks enabled by digital communication. The danger lies in how different organizational types relate to each other. Movements must engage in historical judgment about past leftist experiments, learning lessons from successes and failures. This reflection should inform current practice. The challenge is creating broad-based movements without losing radical edge. Movements should fight for immediate reforms while building capacity for transformation, recognizing that winning concrete victories builds membership and credibility.

This section traces the evolution of decentralized communication networks from the American Revolution to the digital age. Paul Revere's midnight ride was not a solo act but a decentralized network of riders utilizing existing community structures—churches, ministers, physicians, lawyers, family networks, and volunteer associations—to sound alarms about British troop movements. This bottom-up approach enabled the American militia to mobilize effectively for the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The British centralized communication system, in contrast, relied on direct messages from General Thomas Gage to single recipients, collapsing entirely if any link failed. Fast forward to January 18, 2012, when over 115,000 websites including Wikipedia, Google, Reddit, Mozilla Firefox, Craigslist, Wired Magazine, and WordPress voluntarily blacked out for 24 hours—the largest internet blackout in history—to protest SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). This modern protest demonstrated that decentralized R-style networks remain equally effective at protecting individual freedoms, showing how the fundamental principles of bottom-up communication persist across centuries of technological change.

Unlike traditional movements where a single organization receives the impact of communication, modern movements like the 15M allow hundreds or thousands of people and organizations to simultaneously launch communication and receive distributed visibility. This indicates that these groups are highly activated and working extensively on communication materials. Information flows through distributed networks rather than from a central source, allowing movements to feel collective momentum without being controlled by any single authority. This model enables movements to grow organically without requiring traditional organizational structures or hierarchical leadership.

Network-based civil society building has proven effective in historical movements. The Solidarity movement in Poland, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the 1989 revolutions across Eastern Europe all relied on building decentralized networks of civil society. Building effective networks requires patience and cannot be rushed. Physical, face-to-face communication is more secure than digital communication because it is harder to intercept and trace. Decentralized networks where small groups operate independently but share common goals offer significant security advantages. When groups do not know each other and have no direct connections, the compromise of one group does not threaten others. Movements can coordinate toward common goals without members knowing each other's identities.

Communication networks facilitate social change by enabling information spread, coordination of collective action, and development of shared understanding. The structure and organization of communication networks significantly influences the effectiveness of social movements. Historical memory and contemporary communication are interconnected, as how history is remembered shapes present and future understanding. Building effective communication networks is essential for social movements seeking to achieve their goals.