Information is power, and maintaining an empire requires power. Consequently, knowing what is happening as quickly as possible becomes critical for the stability of an empire and its leaders. For information, knowledge of what is happening, to be passed from one person to another requires an established and systematic form of communication.
In the 14th century BCE, the Mongols created and perfected the Mongol Pony Express, whereby information could be communicated at the rate of 200 to 250 miles per day. Horses of the highest quality, three to four hundred of them at a time, were kept throughout the empire at a series of elegant outposts, called Yams. Because it was vitally important for the Emperor to know at all times what was happening in the vastness of his empire and to be assured that his orders were communicated at the fastest possible speed, no expense was spared to keep horses and riders in top shape. They were pampered by design. Riders rode at such high speeds, they were tied to their saddles to keep them from falling off.
The Pony Express, in one form or another, was the fastest method of communication for more than 3,000 years until Samuel Morse invented the telegraph and connected Washington, D.C., to Baltimore in 1843. From that time until now, communication has evolved at a faster and faster clip ― telegraph, telephone, train, airplane, radio, television ― social media.
Today, if a politician in San Francisco utters a sentence at 9:00 AM, we know about it in Boston at 9:01. The growth of technology, and the Pony Express was high tech in its day, has moved humanity forward in ways we don’t often consider.
- In 1920, 35% of homes in America had telephones. Today, the “landline” is going the way of the Wooly Mammoth, and it’s hard to find anyone in the developed world without a smartphone.
- Speaking of homes, in 1920 there were 17.6 million owned or rented housing units in the country, excluding homes on farms; in 2013, the number was 115 million.
- In 1920, John Baird’s first demonstration of television to fifty scientists in central London was still six years away. Today, LG is building interactive televisions into a home’s front door.
- In 1920, there were five radio stations in America; by 1930, ten years later, the number would be 618, and radio would be entering its Golden Era. In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt propelled the medium along with his first Fireside Chat; in 1938, a brash young genius named Orson Wells terrified the nation with his War Of the Worlds broadcast.
- In 1950, there were 98 commercial television stations in the U.S.; by 2017, the number had grown to 1,761.
- Google was founded in 1998, Facebook in 2006, and Twitter in 2007. Billions now subscribe. Prior to this, Americans got their “instant” news from CNN, which came on air for the first time in 1980, Fox News in 1996. Today, these communications behemoths and many others, report “breaking news” every minute of the day.
Today, social media hits us like jackhammers ― All. The. Time.
Given this history, I suggest the worst thing possible for human communication is a super-abundance of it. It desensitizes us to anything meaningful coming out of the chaotic fog of the ether.
It allows the intellectually backward and morally bankrupt to scream lies over and over again to a people hungry to blame someone, anyone, for what they perceive as the injustice within their lives. It allows a reprehensible minority who clamor for fame and adulation to come across as actual leaders of an extremist movement to bring America back to the mirage they paint as the “good old days of the 1950s,” when bigotry and misogyny reigned and made America great. It allows for a servile portion of the electorate, life’s dissatisfied customers, to elevate and venerate a narcissistic, power-crazy (but very clever) lunatic to lead them to their warped version of the promised land. Their Siegfried, their Übermensch.
And while this happens, so many sit by and, by silence, perpetuate the shameful and disgusting behavior.
Right now there is a school of thought, about which we will write later, that believes January 6th was a rehearsal, a dry run. Most will smirk at the idea. This is America, and coups don’t happen here. It might be wise to think a bit longer and deeper about that.
And it might be wise for the folks leading the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers and QAnon, and all the other far right extremist groups to consider that, when they no longer proved useful to him, Adolph Hitler wiped out the Brownshirts in one night in 1934, executing all the leaders and forever destroying the group that had been most vital for his coming to power, the group that had been with him since 1923 and the Beer Hall Putsch, another dry run.
It’s not called The Night Of The Long Knives for nothing.
Tags: communication