"The Revolutionary Evolution of the Media" -- Chapter 2

Chapter 2 Why the Romans Really Built All Those RoadsOK thatamp8217s a bit facetious But the Roman roads had a big hand in creating newspapers amp8230 sort of Like the Interstate highways President Eisenhower started in order to make certain military equipment could move freely the Roman road system amp8220was built to move large bodies of troops around a militarized domain that stretched from whatamp8217s now Spain to Germany and from Britain to Asia Minoramp8221 as Andrew Pettegree wrote in The Invention of News How the World Came To Know About Itself Not long after the roads were built the Emperor Augustus created a courier service to keep in touch across the EmpireThe courier service was the first formal step beyond the intimate amp8220connectivityamp8221 of the family tribe and citystate Think of it as the first pony expressAs Romeamp8217s first autocratic ruler Augustus annexed nice word amp8220 Egypt Dalmatia Pannonia Noricum and Raetia expanded possessions in Africa expanded into Germania and completed the conquest of Hispaniaamp8221 He also ruled through client states such as JudeaThe Roman postal service ceased when the empire crumbled But in 1973 at archaeological excavations dubbed Vindolanda along Hadrianamp8217s wall in the United Kingdom a trove of thousands of writing tablets made of wood was found that contained mundane news along with notes from the local governor and his wife as well as orders for legionnaires and local conscriptsOf course some connectivity had always existed in the realm of commerce and the military going back to the Mesopotamian Sumerians as they created one of the first organized kingdoms circa 23502150 as well as one of the first written languages Akkadian After all someone had to keep track of what was being sent along the Silk and other roads and in the seas sailed by the Phoenicians and others And someone had to make sure soldiers and sailors sometimes returnedThe eras of Xenophon Alexander the Great Hannibal and Julius Caesar spanning the years from about 500 BC to the time of Christ accelerated the forming of multiethnic empires encompassing greater geographical footprintsMuch much later after the Dark Ages began to lighten Maximilian I Holy Roman Emperor between 1493 and 1519 combined the power of printing and the still extant network of roads in his domain by charging Francesco and Janetto de Tassis with creating a regular postal service that crisscrossed Europe from Innsbruck to Brussels via Rome The de Tassis brothers were sons of Alessandro Tassis who had recently organized the papal courier service Maestri dei CorrieriThus the resurrection of the Roman pony express occurred Sort of The service required riders to travel at 75 kilometershour via permanently manned stages swapping horses to continue In 1505 Granada and Toledo were added in Spain where Maximilianamp8217s son Philip coruled The reality of the printing press and moveable type Johannes Gutenberg married the carved wooden block screw press with moveable type and oilbased ink in 1493 was economically driving printing toward mass possibilities adding a conduit form taking literacy from the elite to the massesBut it took another hundred years before either the postal service or the serial news format was really functionalThe renewed ability to shrink amp8211 though not so much yet amp8211 time and space plus growing populations and rulers with diversifying ethnic andor religious subjects drove a need for better communications Printing allowed for mass access to information as literacy grew and as Steven Johnson wrote in How We Got to Now Six Innovations That Made the Modern World printing drove not only communications but also optics as people strained to read and much moreThe building of a systematic way to distribute printed matter via horseback or carriage created a distribution conduit to go along with the newly economical contentNext week Chapter 3 The Religious Tradition of Tracts Pamphlets ampamp SongsIn an almost 50year career writing and reporting on media Paul S Maxwell started andor ran some 45plus publications ranging from CATV Newsweekly to Colorado Magazine to CableVision to Multichannel News to CableFAX and The BRIDGE Suite of daily newsletters and research publications In between publishing stints Maxwell served as an advisor andor consultant to a number of major media companies and media startups including running a unit of MCI and managing a partnership of TCI and McGrawHillSend any and all criticisms suggestions rants threats corrections etc to him at cablemaxmaccom He has a new Web site coming soonCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates at MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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