Masters of the Word Quotes

“George Bernard Shaw’s famous spelling of “fish” as “ghoti”—the first two letters pronounced as the last two in “tough,” the middle letter as in “women,” and the last two as in “nation.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“As populations grow beyond Dunbar’s number, face-to-face contact no longer suffices to maintain political control. At this point, writing supplies the best mechanism for communicating among large numbers of people, and power naturally accrues to the literate. Consequently, societies with high rates of literacy, such as Athens, tend to have more smoothly running republics than those with low rates, such as the late Roman one.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“Humans can maintain only so many functioning relationships; when group size exceeds about 150 members, it becomes impossible to remember not only their individual preferences and peculiarities, but also the complexities of the group’s internal dynamics. Thus, with group sizes larger than 150, direct, face-to-face interaction no longer produces adequate social control, and members tend to drift off and form new tribes. Among behavioral scientists, the 150-person limit is known as “Dunbar’s number,” after the anthropologist/evolutionary psychologist who first proposed it.35”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“Once we are aware of the connection between political power and access to communication technology, it becomes obvious throughout all of human history. These technologies are not in and of themselves oppressive or liberating. Rather, it is relative access to them that determines political reality.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History

“David Sarnoff had predicted, the radio became the ornate mahogany god of the American living room: there were three million sets in 1924, thirty million in 1936, and fifty million by 1940, by which time a simple radio could be had for less than ten dollars.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“Of all the communications technologies discussed in this book, radio and television are the most hierarchical; no preceding media could reach so many people so instantaneously and with so little feedback in the opposite direction.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“The Story of the Telegraph and a History of the Great Atlantic Cable, in which they breathlessly proclaimed, How potent a power, then, is the telegraphic destined to become in the civilization of the world! This binds together by a vital cord all the nations of the earth. It is impossible that old prejudices and hostilities should longer exist, while such an instrument has been created for an exchange of thought between all the nations of the earth.46”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“all democratic societies based on the rule of law, on the Tinkerbell Principle: it functioned only so long as its participants believed in it.48”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“Such was the pattern employed by the Romans during their centuries of conquest: first, recruit the ablest soldiers from recently pacified local populations overawed by the legionaries’ size, military prowess, technology, and literacy; second, teach the new troops not only to fight but also to read and write Latin (or, in the East, Greek); and last, employ these intellectually and physically impressive specimens to conquer, pacify, overawe, and recruit adjoining peoples.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“In short, the Romans conquered most of their known world as much with the deeply institutionalized pen as with the sword, shield, and catapult.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“the stereotypical wealthy, swaggering “ugly Roman” soon became an object of Greek hatred.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“A curious Roman “literacy triangle” centered on three groups: the legions, easily the most literate mass institution in the late Republic; the Christians; and most bizarrely, the slaves—particularly Greek slaves—who did much of Rome’s writing, and even its reading.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“In the early fifth century BC, a roll of papyrus, consisting of about twenty sheets, cost between one and three drachmas—that is, one to three days’ wages for a semiskilled worker.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“In the words of classicist Jennifer Wise, “With little exaggeration, it could be said that the entirety of the Odyssey ultimately boils down to one simple technological problem: the epic hero’s inability to write home.”35”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“This combination of papyrus and a vowel-and-consonant alphabet allowed, for the first time in human history, the potential for mass literacy.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“Another reason for the spread of the script may simply have been the commercial vitality of the Aramaeans, who were to the deserts of the northern Levantine region what the Phoenicians were to the sea, trading particularly in copper, ivory, incense, and textiles of all descriptions. Whatever the reason, with each change of political dominance, from Assyrian to Babylonian, and from Babylonian to Persian, Aramaic only became more prominent.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“The practice of silent reading would not become common until almost the modern period, and some linguists argue that while most modern Western languages are easy to read silently, the ancient Semitic languages, particularly vowel-less Hebrew, could not be read silently, a contention that most bar and bat mitzvah boys and girls would surely agree with.19 In the words of biblical scholar David Carr, When you list those people who are depicted as writing in ancient Israel, it quickly becomes evident that virtually all are some sort of official. Aside from God, who is one of the Bible’s most prolific writers, virtually all writers and readers in the Bible are officials of some kind: scribes, kings, priests, and other bureaucrats.20”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“The Assyrians’ earlier decision to spare the southern kingdom proved one of history’s fulcrums, for at least two reasons. First, it allowed the Jews, and their cultural contribution to the West, to survive. Second, the sparing of the southern state resulted in a socioeconomic transformation that probably produced mankind’s first small step toward mass literacy. While mass literacy requires both a simplified alphabet and readily available writing implements, they are not in and of themselves sufficient. Literacy is also spurred by two other conditions: prosperity, which gives people the leisure to pursue it; and urbanization, which provides the critical mass of human contact to propagate it.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“At the same time that the Aramaeans adapted the alphabet to their own use, they also benefited from the domestication of the camel and the development of the North Arabian saddle. The combination allowed them to mount in excess of five hundred pounds of cargo on the average animal, and about half a ton on the strongest beasts; a single camel driver, conducting a train of three to six animals, could move a ton or two of cargo between twenty and sixty miles a day. This was one of history’s great transportation revolutions, and it made the Aramaeans the terrestrial equivalent of the Phoenicians: a trading people who spread far and wide a powerful alphabet.14”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“The demise of cuneiform was largely the work of an obscure Semitic tribe living on the western fringes of the great Mesopotamian empires. Modern people dimly remember that Jesus spoke Aramaic, but few, even among contemporary practicing Jews, recall that so did the majority of his fellow Jews.13 Fewer still realize that the modern “Hebrew alphabet” is actually Aramaic. The silent tragedy of the Aramaeans is that they created a language and alphabet that long outlived their culture and civilization.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“The temporal and geographic connection between the alphabet and monotheism in Egypt-Palestine during the middle of the second millennium may be more than coincidence. What might tie them together? The notion of a disembodied, formless, all-seeing, and ever-present supreme being requires a far more abstract frame of mind than that needed for the older plethora of anthropomorphized beings who oversaw the heavenly bodies, the crops, fertility, and the seas. Alphabetic writing requires the same high degree of abstraction and may have provided a literate priestly caste with the intellectual tools necessary to imagine a belief system overseen by a single disembodied deity. Whatever the reason, Judaism and the West acquired their God and their Book.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“some have speculated that Moses was influenced by Atenism, or was perhaps even a believer. Thus, in the middle of the second millennium, the Egypt/Sinai area saw the advent of Western monotheism,”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“most authorities believe that the proto-Semitic inscriptions the Petries first found at Serabit derived from Egyptian hieratic or hieroglyphic writing.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“Linguists had long known that Latin script—the everyday alphabet of today’s Western world—evolved from Greek letters, which had themselves derived from Phoenician, as did Hebrew.6”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“The scribe was no mere linguistic technician, but rather the sole possessor of the skill set that made civilization hum, a sort of investment banker, engineer, and diplomat all rolled up into one. Or, in the words of the linguist Ignaz Gelb, “Writing exists only in a civilization, and a civilization cannot exist without writing.”47”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“Mesopotamian cities identified closely with their deities, and their temples functioned as the main social and economic engines. The king served as the intermediary between the city and its deity, and his palace operated side by side with the temple. Both palace and temple commanded the key function in any society: the production and distribution of food.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“In ancient societies, the law functioned as a two-edged sword; while standardizing procedure and bringing it out into the open, the law also concentrated power in those few who could read and write.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“Sargon’s grandson, Naram-Sin, who became the first Mesopotamian ruler to assume divine status and proclaimed himself “king of the four corners of the world.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“the reason why Gilgamesh needed the assent of his elders to defend his city was probably that he did not have at his disposal the writing tools necessary to command absolute political control over large numbers of citizens. By the same token, Uruk’s literate, scribal elite was not yet able to disempower its illiterate masses.”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

“most paleographers now believe that the “idea of writing” must have spread along with commerce, most likely from Sumer to Egypt.33”
― William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet