The Salvation of Cage-Free Media
It was a hot summer afternoon in the panhandle of Texas. The sound of my lawn mower was drowned out by Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast. Physically, I was in my front yard, however, in my mind, I was on the Eurasian steep as one of the most effective conquerors of all history earned his title by ravaging the more “civilized” settled societies of the ancient world. I finished my yard work before the first part of the five-part series Wrath of the Khans was over, and I found myself searching for more work to do. I needed an excuse to continue listening so I could learn how the story had ended. I felt the tug of an addiction forming: I needed a little more, I needed to hear the end.
Hardcore History was one of the podcasts that first opened my eyes to the potential and versatility of new platform-based media. There was no longer a “gate keeper” as Carlin refers to them, controlling the flow or dissemination of information to the masses. New Media platforms such as podcasting, blogs, and social media offer a way of sidestepping the bottle neck of a media conglomerate/corporate companies. This frees creators to create without the pressure of impressing or catering to a specific target audience. The Joe Rogan Experience, another paradigm shattering show, and Hardcore History are essentially on the same “network,” but are very different shows in style and purpose. Technology now allows private individuals an unprecedented ability to project their thoughts and opinions to other individuals. When enough like-minded individuals gather, they form into crowds…and with crowds come revolutions.
A quick zoom out for historical context. Throughout the ages, there have been many “new” forms of media. Humanity took its first baby steps towards media by developing spoken language anywhere between 2 million and 50,000 years ago. As you can imagine, this is a difficult thing for archeologist to pin point because no “evidence” has ever been collected. That came with the next advancement of written language, with the first evidence appearing on clay tablets in 3100 BC in Mesopotamia. With this advent, a new class of people became necessary: the scholar/priest. These people had to spend long hours learning how to read/write in order to keep records, provide historical context for their present society, and tell their story to the next generation. In these early days of written communication, reproducing literature/knowledge was a painstaking task: each line had to be hand copied. This was until the printing press was invented by Gutenberg in 1440 AD. With this new technological platform, information could be disseminated to the masses in the language of the common man by the common man. This lead to a wide range of revolutions both religious, in the Protestant reformation, and in thought, with the Enlightenment and the corresponding scientific revolution. Fast forward a few hundred years to 1990. The Internet’s potential, after rumbling for the better part of the 20th century, was realized when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. The WWW is a platform which operates through the internet, creating a user-friendly interface for sharing information. This coalescence of concept and technology was the realization of what Gutenberg had started all those years before. Now each person with the means and intention can “broadcast” their thoughts, opinions, and perspective all over the world.
Zoom back in on the young man sweating in his front yard. The realization that I was in the middle of a historical revolution was beginning to occur to me. With internet-based media, everyone is equal and location doesn’t matter. There is no interview process before stepping behind a microphone, in front of a camera, or sitting down to a keyboard. For better or for worse, everyone’s thoughts and opinions can be projected to the masses. This is a revolution of opportunity. People who were normally forgotten by history can now stand up and be counted. Educators have used the flexibility and reach of the internet to built entire schools online and offer endless educational resources. The average man now has a louder voice and more resources than any other time in history. Because of the internet, an entirely new type of society is being built where who you are is far less important than what it is you choose to be about. The most dangerous thing for the stability of a culture is allowing the citizenship the opportunity to build a culture for themselves.
Hardcore History remains one of my favorite shows because it provides a historical context for the present time. The people of ancient China, for instance, feared that Genghis Khan was destroying the world during his conquest, and for many Chinese, their world did end, but history continued to march forward, and their suffering became a remnant of the past. The digital revolution, just as with the printing press, will reform some institutions, destroy others, and create entirely new ways of thinking. There is always a period of instability between the old world being destroyed and a new world being built. We have some very real problems to deal with in the wake of collapsing institutions, and a new society will present new challenges. These problems, along with their solutions, will be how our era is defined.
