dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Before the written word people lived tribally. All communication was word-of-mouth, and social order was personal, local, and traditional. Religion was myth, custom, and folklore. Among the Old Testament patriarchs, it was family memory.

The development of writing made possible the state and organized religion, and ultimately extensive, elaborate, and law-governed entities that last for centuries, like the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church.

The printing press was another great leap forward. By promoting standardization and fast and cheap communication it led to the modern world, with its modern science, nationalism, and comprehensive bureaucratic administration. It also led to the Protestant and Catholic reformations.

Communication by wire and then the airwaves—telegraph, telephone, radio, film, TV—shrank social as well as physical distance. So it gave us mass democracy and pop culture. It also gave us Hitler and Stalin. Such men could never have done what they did without radio, film, and loudspeakers to propagandize the masses, and the telephone to make possible instant personal supervision and control of everyone everywhere.

In the Church, twentieth century communications empowered both ultramontanism and cafeteria Catholicism. They made the Pope a celebrity whose every word was spread around the world, while flooding the lives of Catholics with secular influences.

The Internet has continued and radicalized many of the same tendencies. By making everyone everywhere immediately present to everyone else it has abolished space and privacy. The vastly reduced cost of producing, gathering, arranging, and propagating text, audio, image, and video has multiplied the possibilities of popular participation, of teaching and learning, and of manipulation and propaganda.

moar https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/01/06/church-state-and-the-internet/