Can I read Masters of the word: how media shaped history, from the alphabet to the Internet on EtoBox?

Masters of the word: how media shaped history, from the alphabet to the Internet by William L Bernstein is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Masters of the word: how media shaped history, from the alphabet to the Internet about?

From the author of A Splendid Exchange comes a remarkable history of media - from the alphabet to the internet - that examines how it has shaped human society over millennia. In Masters of the Word, Bernstein chronicles the development of the technology of human communication, or media, starting with the birth of writing thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia. In Sumer, and then Egypt, this revolutionary tool allowed rulers to extend their control far and wide, giving rise to the world's first empires. When Phoenician traders took their alphabet to Greece, literacy's first boom led to the birth of drama and democracy. In Rome, it helped spell the downfall of Empire. As Bernstein illustrates, new communication technologies - from the clay tablet to the radio - have all had a profound effect on human society. But it's not just the technologies themselves that have changed the world, it's access to them. Medieval scriptoria and vernacular bibles gave rise to religious dissent, but it was only when the combination of cheaper paper and Gutenberg's printing press drove down the cost of books by some 97% that the dynamite of Reformation was lit. The Industrial Revolution brought the telegr

Author

William L Bernstein

Publisher

Atlantic Books Ltd

Published

2013

Language

EN

ISBN

9781782390008

Subjects

History, Sociology, Literary Fiction