Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years - Softcover

Tom Standage is digital editor at the Economist and editor in chief of Economist.com. He is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller A History of the World in 6 Glasses and The Victorian Internet, described by the Wall Street Journal as a “dot-com cult classic.” Standage has written for numerous publications, including Wired, the New York Times, and the Guardian. He lives in London with his wife and children. Visit his website at www.tomstandage.com.

*Starred Review* Whatever adolescents and technophiles might think, social media is nothing new. Standage (A History of the World in 6 Glasses, 2005) explores the human impulse to socialize and the earlier technologies, from papyrus to printing press, that accommodated that impulse. Messengers and travelers shuttled papyrus rolls throughout the Roman Empire. An early Roman newspaper, founded by Julius Caesar, no less, was posted, and readers were expected to copy it and distribute the news themselves through their social networks. The wax tablet bore strong resemblance to the iPad. Pamphlets and news ballads went viral, spread throughout Europe by travelers, and the Devonshire Manuscript was the Tudor-era Facebook. Standage compares the back-and-forth of ancient graffiti comments to comment threads in blogs and puts Paul’s epistles in the context of social media as he and other apostles spread Christianity. Rumors, gossip, love poems, and political and religious unrest were all part of the stew of discussion as technology morphed into mass communication and the Internet age. Standage offers historical perspective on such concerns about evolving social media as faddishness, coarsening of discourse, distraction from serious work, and erosion of social skills. Still, the social media evolution marched on, influencing politics and religion and aiding revolution in Europe and the Americas. A thoroughly fascinating look at the evolution of social media. --Vanessa Bush