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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29662 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I think this is a strong perspective, especially in light of previous perspectives going into earlier communication technology revolutions. One of the early motives / aspirations of the printing press, for example, was framed not in terms of 'think of what it could do for newspapers' but 'think of how many more Bibles the world could had.' An early advocacy group for radio were, again, religious interests thinking in terms of spreading the message / sermons / hymns to wider audiences.

The point here isn't about the susceptibility of religious types (though the parallels between ideologues who substitute ideology for religion is interesting), but rather that the 'current' dominant ideological consensus types often imagine new communication technologies as a way to spread their consensus, rather than challenge it. Twitter and Social Media would inspire pro-western/democratic/progressive/etc. movements. Telegraphs would allow power centers to better assert their control over distant parts of their countries, rather than help new power centers arise. International communism/socialism would allow the Soviets to lead the global revolution, rather than splintering and schisming as local communist leaders usurped the foreign advisor factions that often helped them rise to power. Etc. etc. etc.

Your 'born on third, believes they hit a triple' aligns to that historical parallel, as does the contemporary pushback on uncontrolled information parallels the historical examples. Once expanded, once-unquestionably dominant factions try to re-assert their authority by regulation / reconsolidation / attempts to reassert exclusive authority.

One of the early motives / aspirations of the printing press, for example, was framed not in terms of 'think of what it could do for newspapers' but 'think of how many more Bibles the world could had.'

This thought had extremely different valences depending on your opinion of the commonfolk; the Church hierarchy was corrupt, yes. But they were also right that proliferation of the sacred text in the vernacular would cause an absolute riot of absolutely uncontrollable radicalism, with not-infrequently horrifying consequences.

The Church hierarchy was the original market for printed bibles.

Not in the vernacular.

And they were wrong that such chaos wasn't worth it, and indeed that it could even potentially be avoided in any case.

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