How Ancient Communication Lead us to an Abundance of Media

Sometimes it is hard to imagine in our internet crazed world that a time existed where there was no internet, no social media, or smartphones. Way before technology existed, all of the humans alive communicated verbally. This ancient era of time known as the Tribal/Oral society was very different from the world we live in today, but we got here somehow! In between these two vastly different eras referred to as the ancient era and the postmodern era we live in today, were two other eras referred to as medieval era and the modern era. In the Ancient era, reliant on oral communication only features how communal human life was. The medieval era where the world was still heavily reliant on oral communication developing reading and writing. In this era the development of writing and books integrated into society revolutionizing learning and knowledge about ideas such as religion, government and policy. The modern era which began around early 19th century around the period of global industrialization in now developed countries. In the age of industrialization, the world started to slowly move toward the world we recognize today. The postmodern era is when print culture became phenomenon and mass produced and changed the way society functioned. Institutions of health care, education, prison systems, factories and more. Today in the Postmodern era we are centered around the internet and media, which leaves us faced with an information overload like no era ever before.

Oral societies valued agriculture and religion, everything anyone knew was confined locally. Joshua Meyrowitz writes that often the people in the ancient era built their environment in a circular shape to value the use of sound. Memorization methods often were rhyming, tools we would now call mnemonic rhyme. Naturally occurring events (thunder, fires, etc.) were used as association for time and often relied on the memories of the eldest generation’s memory of these events. Ancient cultures relied on dance and movement that we often perceive in society now as “strange or abnormal” cultural heritage. There was little sense of individuality in oral society, with everyone being local and reliant on one another so heavily no one person really has a lot of different experiences than someone they live locally with. In this local oral based society usually if one person had knowledge about a certain something it would be spread and be a commonwealth for all in the society; leaving even less room for the diversity of the individual to form.

This medieval era of verbal communication then ended when writing begins to develop. In this time period physical writing was a commodity. Writing and reading in this time period were beyond hard to understand and learn. In the beginning of written work, only what was spoken allowed would be written down. During this era whilst any person wrote they would also read the word aloud. Writing is not something that is naturally humans are capable of doing, it took lots of time to get to the level of understanding around written word that we have today.

Ancient era of life ultimately differs from life today in obvious ways but shows similarities to our lives now. In life today we have embraced the open-style interior layout concepts, circular style classrooms resemble oral society. Electronic media and oral communication are comparable as Meyrowitz says “dominant sensory experience and the near-simultaneity of action, perception, and reaction. On the radio and TV, the word returns as an event, rather than as an object. Electronic media tend to facilitate new forms of shared experience.”