Writing on the Wall Quotes

“In the United States radio was centralized to maximize advertising revenue; in Britain to preserve and promote the values of the elite; and in Germany to advance Nazi propaganda. Whatever the reason, the result was the most centralized medium in history. In the United States radio listeners were gathered up by networks that saw them as consumers to be sold to; in Britain they were the masses to be instructed and improved; in Germany they were the people to be indoctrinated and misled. In each case there was a striking “us and them” division between broadcasters and the faceless mass of their listeners.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“such a social-media environment; it is merely the most recent and most efficient way that humans have found to scratch a prehistoric itch. The compelling nature of social media, then, can be traced back in part to the evolution of the social brain, as”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“Yet the history of media shows that this is just the modern incarnation of the timeless complaint of the intellectual elite, every time technology makes publishing easier, that the wrong sort of people will use it to publish the wrong sorts of things.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“No doubt there was some time-wasting in coffee houses, as their critics claimed. But coffee houses also provided a lively intellectual and social environment in which people could meet and ideas could collide in unexpected ways, producing a stream of innovations that shaped the modern world. On balance, the introduction of coffee houses did far more good than harm, which should give those concerned about the time-wasting potential of Internet-based social platforms pause for thought. What new ideas and unexpected connections might be brewing in Twitter’s global coffeehouse?”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“Paul used social media to ensure that his view prevailed, cementing the establishment of the Christian church as a religion open to all, and not just to Jews. Such is his influence that his letters are still read out in Christian churches all over the world today— a striking testament to the power of documents copied and distributed along social networks.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“Literacy was power.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“social media is not new. It has been around for centuries. Today, blogs are the new pamphlets. Microblogs and online social networks are the new coffee houses. Media-sharing sites are the new commonplace books. They are all shared, social platforms that enable ideas to travel from one person to another, rippling through networks of people connected by social bonds, rather than having to squeeze through the privileged bottleneck of broadcast media. The rebirth of social media in the Internet age represents a profound shift—and a return, in many respects, to the way things used to be.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“The practice of linking entire networks, rather than individual computers, came to be known as “internetworking” or”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“In the United States radio listeners were gathered up by networks that saw them as consumers to be sold to; in Britain they were the masses to be instructed and improved; in Germany they were the people to be indoctrinated and misled.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“This new, telegraphic writing style also influenced public speaking: short sound bites became popular because they were easier for stenographers to transcribe, and cheaper and quicker for reporters to transmit.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“One survey of American newspapers found that the number of articles written by papers’ own writers increased from 25 percent to 45 percent between the 1820s and 1850s.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“One common abbreviation used in Roman letters was SPD, which was short for salutem plurimam dicit, or “sends many greetings.” This served as a greeting at the beginning of a letter, to indicate the sender and the receiver, as in “Marcus Sexto SPD” (“Marcus sends many greetings to Sextus”). Another popular acronym was SVBEEV, which was short for si vales, bene est, ego valeo (“if you are well, that is good, I am well”). Such abbreviations saved space and time, just as acronyms (BTW, AFAIK, IANAL) do today in Internet posts and text messages.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“most of the stories in the Boston News-Letter were simply copied from the London papers.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“At the time there were no printing presses and no paper.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge. —Marcus Tullius Cicero”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“(In the computer era we have returned to the custom of scrolling through texts, but we now scroll up and down, rather than right to left as the Romans did.)”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“Image of a Roman wax tablet, which looks very like an iPad.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“The mere act of sharing something can, in other words, be a form of self-expression.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“...people enjoy being able to articulate their interests and define themselves by selectively compiling and resharing content created by others”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“It is a sign of a medium's immaturity when one of the main topics of discussion is the medium itself.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“All this will come as a surprise to modern Internet users who may assume that today’s social-media environment is unprecedented. But many of the ways in which we share, consume, and manipulate information, even in the Internet era, build upon habits and conventions that date back centuries.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years

“Television’s appeal is apparent from the steady increase in the average amount of time spent watching television in America, from four and a half hours a day in 1950 to five hours in 1960, six hours in 1970, and seven hours in 1990. As the number of homes with multiple screens increased, and cable and satellite television provided dozens and then hundreds of channels to choose from, the number of hours watched increased still further, exceeding eight hours a day in the early twenty-first century.”
― Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years