Communication To/With/By the Masses

This chapter starts by briefly mapping the modes and media of communication, each with its specific type and degree of virtuality (mode is the way in which we “express” contents: orally, textually, symbolically, linguistically etc.; media are the technological tools and objects through which we transmit messages). Then the history of human communication is presented from its earliest origins to writing (evolving from pictographs to ideographs to the alphabet) that brought with it the virtualization of other spheres: religion, government, and commerce. A discussion ensues regarding the elements that underly “media virtuality”: orality/literacy; time/distance. Then on to a brief survey regarding maps i.e., the virtuality of graphics. From there, a major section is devoted to the virtuality of the printed word in the early modern era (e.g., distancing the author and the book product from readers; reinforcing and expanding human cognitive abstraction), as well as print’s modal expansion of virtual contents: textbooks, newspapers, pamphlets, fictional novels. The chapter concludes by assessing communication’s virtuality evolution over the past several millennia until the nineteenth century: first, to the audience; then with the audience; and finally, by the audience.

1. 1.

   There are some quite rudimentary exceptions to this rule. For example, dogs will urinate on a spot to communicate that “this is my area.” Whales can “sing” to other whales thousands of kilometers away, although with today's international shipping ambient noise, this has declined to “only” about 50 km (Roman, 2008). Thus, human communication is not uniquely “virtual” from a distance perspective [V3], but the variety and richness of human non-face-to-face communication clearly sets it apart qualitatively from very limited animal “virtual” communication.

2. 2.

   Some evolutionary development psychologists claim that everything humans do is based on survival and reproduction: “A complete understanding of human social and cognitive development, and any associated sex differences, requires an understanding of human evolution and the associated epigenetic processes that guide the development of evolved social and cognitive phenotypes” (Geary & Bjorklund, 2000, p. 63). For the influence of evolution on human communication, see: Hauser, 1996.

3. 3.

   More recent estimates place the number of world languages at around 6000 (not 3000 as Ong thought), but of these approximately 3000 will most probably be extinct by the end of the twenty-first century.

4. 4.

   Chomsky’s innatist approach is not the only theory, although it is dominant. The two main competing theories are: a—behaviorist that claims language to be mostly learned through repetition and conditioning; b—hypothesis testing, arguing that children learn syntactical rules by postulating hypotheses and then testing them (not necessarily out loud).

5. 5.

   The rabbis instituted a religio-political revolution, establishing that henceforth it would not be the actual, literal text of the Bible that is determinative of religious practice, but rather the Rabbis’ interpretation [V6] of that biblical text that would define how Judaism was to be conducted. As we’ll shortly see, this is an interesting harbinger of the Protestant Revolution 1500 years later!

6. 6.

   The latest archeological evidence shows that writing was invented independently on at least four historical occasions: Mesopotamia around 3200–2900 BCE; Egypt around the same time; China in 1200 BCE; and in Meso-America sometime during the first millennium BCE (Mullen, 2010).

7. 7.

   The English language today has approximately three million words—all formed from a mere 26 letters. The number of grammatically correct sentences that can be formed is innumerable [V16].

8. 8.

   9 The origin of the word “author” is Middle English when authors hand wrote their own book and therefore were considered to be an authority on their subject.

9. 9.

   The newspaper, a light-heavy medium (discardable, but easily archived in libraries), was exclusively local through much of American history; its central role was to maintain communal feeling in large, increasingly multi-ethnic cities.

10. 10.

    The following schematic history of map-making is comprehensively referenced in Edson (2001): “Bibliographic Essay: History of Cartography.”

11. 11.

    One of the latest theories regarding autism is that it is caused by the child's inability to filter out stimuli. The constant onslaught on the brain causes it to shut down. In other words, autistic people might in fact be more open than normal people to external stimuli [V21]—with the overload causing them to end up with less ability to “understand,” and connect to, the external world (Frith, 2003).

12. 12.

    A very loose analogy to this would be Steve Jobs who was the first (along with Steve Wozniak) to invent the personal computer (Apple II), but it was Bill Gates’ more popular DOS coupled with IBM's marketing power that caused the mass market for personal computers to take off, bringing on the personal computer revolution.

13. 13.

    Some books were designed for silent reading already in the twelfth century, but most continued to be read out loud until well into the print era (Vandendorpe, 1999, p. 7).

14. 14.

    Even today very few newspaper readers are aware that the journalist almost never pens the headlines of their own news items; the editor does. This is not weak virtuality [V5: distortion] but rather “strong” [V31: mistaken]. Moreover, the virtuality of journalism has recently taken on a completely new dimension: articles that are completely written by computer, with a writing style indistinguishable from human journalists (Kotenidis & Veglis, 2021). Obviously, such “journalism” is virtual in different ways [V6; V13; and, once again regarding the writer: V31].

15. 15.

    Logan (2004, p. 69) makes the following, thought-provoking but controversial point: “The linear, sequential mode of building a system that the [Western] alphabet encouraged and Chinese characters discouraged also influenced industrial development in the East and West. Despite their technological progress, the Chinese never linked their inventions together to create assembly-line production characteristics of the Western Industrial Revolution. The lack of abstraction in the writing system reflects itself throughout Chinese thought and discourages the development of the abstract notions of codified law, monotheism, abstract science, and deductive logic.” In other words, the less abstract Chinese ideograms that were also not as “linear” as letters forming words, conceptually prevented the Chinese from developing a rational-logical science as well as modern manufacturing meta-technology. If this is true (a big if), then Chinese communication (and that of other Far Eastern cultures based on ideographic writing) would tend have a lower level of content and modal (but not necessarily media) virtuality than that found in the West.

Authors and Affiliations

1. School of Communication, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

   Sam N. Lehman-Wilzig

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sam N. Lehman-Wilzig .

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