In a country where people pause what they’re doing and turn up the news on the hour without thinking about it, the need for quality online journalism is obvious. …..
Jerusalem Post.
About 4000 years ago the ancient Hebrews, my ancestors invented the first phonetic alphabet. The result was the first culture where most people (or perhaps just men?) could read!
Reading changed everything, every Jew could .. and was expected to .. read the Torah.
Reading was no longer the property of the Pharaohs and Priests. After the alphabet, the Pharaoh needed to OWN the scribes.. the word was dangerous but copying written text was onerous so few could afford to employ scribes. Only the wealthy, the government and the priesthood could afford libraries.
China had solved the copying problem but character based languages have never been very democratic. In China the government controlled printing and the education needed to read characters.
In the west, Guttenberg changed that. The printing press replaced legions of slaves, scribes, or monks. The masses could read and there was a market for the printed word! People nowadays have easier access to book printing than ever before, too.
Of course the “press” required capital. As a result, at least in Europe, publishers replaced church and the government control of the “word.” Ben Franklin rose to power as a publisher. Luther’s bible, the Encyclopedia, and Sam Adams’ circular letters undermined the establishments of their day. This effect was obvious to Lenin and, later Hitler, Mao and Murdoch. All of these people invested huge efforts in control of the written word.
Now, the Internet has created a new challenge. Expensive printing has been replaced by inexpensive posting. You can read more about how printing technology has evolved from the likes of Marketbusinessnews.
Now the struggle changes from a fight over who owns the press, to who controls the gathering of information and its distribution.
If the NY Times and the SAP support a great network of reporters and writers, who pays these people’s salaries?
If art is democratic, who decides what is art? If a new Picasso emerges on the web and posts her work publicly, is the work art?
Who owns science? If the public pays for research, how can publishers claim to own the the copyright to work funded by and needed by the public?
Scribes: