The Ascent of Media: From Gilgamesh to Google via Gutenburg

by Roger Parry

Overview

Our society is shaped by our media - now more than at any time in history. They play a crucial role in culture, commerce and politics alike. The Ascent of Media is the first book to look at the new digital era in the context of all that has gone before, and to build on the past to describe the media landscape of the future. Roger Parry takes us on a journey from the earliest written story - the Legend of Gilgamesh etched on clay tablets - to the Gutenberg press, and from the theatres of Athens to satellite TV and the coming semantic web. Tracing 3000 years of history, he shows how today's media have been shaped by the interaction of politics, economics and technology. He explains why Britain has the public service BBC whilst America developed the private broadcasting networks ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. He profiles the people and organizations that have created the media world and reveals the often surprising stories behind such ubiquitous items as the keyboard, telephone dial and tabloid. The book shows that issues of today such as a sensationalist press, piracy, monopoly, walled gardens and balancing advertising and subscription revenue have all happened before. Each upheaval in the media world - the development of moveable type printing in the 1450s; the telegraph network in the 1850s; radio broadcasting in the 1920s; and digital distribution in the 2000s - created huge fortunes, challenged authority and raised fundamental issues of copyright, privacy and censorship. Traditional media then adapt, evolve and go on to thrive in the face of competition. The convergence of the internet, mobile phones and tablet computers is now transforming our culture. Established media giants are struggling, while new firms like Google and Apple are thriving. The superabundance of media, with increasing amounts generated by consumers themselves, means that media professionals are becoming curators as much as creators of content. The Ascent of Media traces the story of media from clay tablets to tabloids to the tablet computer. It relates how we got where we are and, based on the experience of history, where we are likely to go next.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781473644977
Publisher:	Quercus
Publication date:	09/22/2011
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	228
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Roger Parry began his career working for Saatchi & Saatchi, then worked as a journalist for the BBC, LBC and ITV and a consultant with McKinsey and Company. Chairman and CEO of the international division of Clear Channel Communications Inc between 1998 and 2006, he has always sat in the upper echelons of the global media industry. As it stands he is Chairman of four publicly listed companies — representing every aspect of the media from publishing to market research to Shakespeare's Globe Trust.

Table of Contents

Part One: Introduction: Media's Building Blocks

Part Two: Evolution: The Media Journey Theatre Books Pictures Posters Postal Systems Newspapers Magazines Comics Telegraph Telephone Recorded sound Radio Cinema Television
Video games Web Key events in media

Part Three: Future: Everything that went before...and more Acknowledgments Sources Notes Index

Preface

This book began a few years ago, in a coffee shop in Palo Alto, California. Faced with several hours' wait before going to the nearby airport of San Francisco I started to write an article, trying to make sense of the economic hurricane blowing through the media industry, uprooting established structures and destroying traditional organizations. At that time Palo Alto felt like the eye of the media storm.

Drinking a cappuccino on University Avenue, I was a few hundred yards from where Google had its first real office, over a bicycle shop and just as close to the first HQ of Facebook. The mouse and the internet were pioneered a short bus ride away, at Menlo Park. Apple created its magic devices down the road at Cupertino. Behind me was the tunnel under the rail tracks to Stanford University. For a media professional in the early twenty-first century it was like being a priest on a trip to the Vatican or a wine drinker visiting Bordeaux. Unremarkable though it looked (Palo A lot is small college town), this was ground zero for the new digital media. I wondered what Plato would have made of it.

In the late 1600s the nascent newspaper industry had congregated on London's Fleet Street because of its proximity to the original book market of St Paul's churchyard; around 1910 Hollywood had the weather, space, and willing workforce to make movies; by the 1920s New York was the origin of much early radio broadcasting, as it was home to the most important paymasters, the advertising agencies. And now Palo Alto had become the place for digital media, because it brought together the computer scientists of Stanford, the technologists of Silicon Valley, and the venture capitalists of Sand Hill Road. It was an environment that encouraged the collision of ideas between software, engineering, and finance.

Over more that 3,000 years of development, mediated content has become increasingly important in making society function. It has been a story of constant growth in the amount and range of material available as media has taken up more of our time and become an ever larger part of the economy. The recent creative destruction initiated by the internet has been just one more, typically disruptive, era in the media story.

The advance of media has not been smooth, however, and the equivalent of the recent dot-com boom and bust has happened many times before. The development of electricity and railways led to the telegraph network in the 1850s, which, in turn, laid the ground for the telephone and, ultimately, the internet. Mass-market newspapers were born in the 1880s because of a combination of steam presses, automated typesetting, cheap newsprint, and advertising. Photosensitive film, clockwork motors, and the new working-class audience created cinema around 1910. And the vacuum tube, electromagnetic waves, and recorded sound enabled radio in the 1920s.

Each of these media revolutions produced a frenzy of financial speculation. Fortunes were made and lost, and preexisting media companies turned upside down. The first few years of each new technology created confusion and false starts and gave little indication of the media landscape that would finally emerge. This time it has been no different.

Nevertheless, now there is a better understanding of how digital media will fit into the broader picture. Old media formats have suffered disruption but are adapting to the changed conditions. New media are emerging to exploit screen-based, internet-enabled devices. By 2011, stimulated by a huge increase in sales of electronic readers, the value of ebooks sold monthly in America was greater than the amount spent on buying trade paperbacks; film studios were beginning to make money out of streaming; record companies were finding legal solutions for downloading music; newspapers were experimenting with charging for online content; Google made record profits; and Facebook recruited its 600 millionth member. After the initial chaos a more ordered and reengineered media industry is taking shape. The technology is in place, so the challenge now is to develop the political and economic frameworks to allow creativity to flourish, reward innovation, and preserve quality.

In trying to understand all this, it became clear to me that looking back at the history of media can provide real insights into its future. Part One considers the building blocks of mediated content; namely, speech, music, images, and writing. Part two analyzes the three forces that have shaped the media-politics, economics, and technology-and describes the people, organizations, and events that have defined the 16 main media types. Part
Three speculates on the future of media in the context of past experience.

Media are going through a time of great change and are entering one of great opportunity. This book tells the story of their unstoppable ascent.

Editorial Reviews

The Ascent of Media, Roger Parry's new book tracing how we moved from clay tablets to Apple's iPad...anyone trying to forecast the media's future should find [this] sobering...[An] important lesson stems from Mr Parry's central thesis: all media developments are shaped by politics, economics and technology—Financial Times

Media are going through huge changes. This book provides a thought provoking read and a terrific insight into where we are now and where media might go next.—James Palumbo, founder of Ministry of Sound

Roger Parry is extraordinarily well placed to provide this informed tour d horizon of media. It is rare to find insight illuminated by both creative and commercial expertise. But no appraisal of the development of modern media would be complete without such an inclusive perspective. Parry is exceptionally well placed to provide it.

Roger Parry provides a fascinating narrative of media past, present and future which will inform all practitioners and all who are interested in the development of the zeitgeist and of the great forces in society. The shape of the media is constantly altered by changes in technology, lifestyles and fashion, and the media affect all political, commercial, cultural and scientific developments.

The aptly titled Ascent of Media is a must for anyone with even a passing interest in today's vast and exploding world of media. From students of the industry to the leaders of businesses who may struggle to know how to spend their shareholders advertising money wisely, Roger Parry provides insights into what is really happening in the digital chaos of the twenty-first century...

Whatever the technology, mankind has always enjoyed a good story. The Ascent of Media tells a cracking story with a cornucopia of insights. Read Roger Parry and you're equipped to imagine where digital media might take us next.—Peter Bazalgette, TV producer and President, Royal Television Society

Roger Parry's scholarly journey through the history of media contains important lessons for today's digital pioneers. Roger Parry is a wise, experienced media operator and observer. His range is wide across books, comics, radio, movies, video games, theatre and more with eclectic taste and a gift for detail. But one theme, essentially, covers all. He perceives a public hunger for information, entertainment, and shared experience growing invention by invention, device by device: he extrapolates Aristotle's city on a global scale. He stresses ways as well as means. Were Defoe and mates the first bloggers? Were the random collection of contributors who compiled the earliest news sheets really citizen journalists? He binds evolving society and accelerating communication together. He seems to see the whole picture. So we can finally begin to get a handle on a future that, in essence if not in precise physical form, our children's children will recognise 50 years hence. And Parry's textbook? That may be still read for its scholarship and plain old-fashioned common sense by students of life itself.—The Observer

Roger's enjoyable and wide-ranging book should definitely be read by young people entering or thinking of entering the media industry, but also by older people like me already passionately immersed in it and wrestling daily with the digital monster.—Richard Hooper, former Deputy Chairman of the Office of Communications (Ofcom)

The Ascent of Media is a wonderful overview of the history of all forms of media and the key people responsible for their development. It leaves the reader in no doubt as to its power to influence our opinions and emotions, leverage commercial and political messages, stimulate the senses and at the same time enhance our productivity.

The Ascent of Media is really about the ascent of man: from a species that started recording his life experience on clay tablets and now records it on computer tablets. In Mr. Parry s view, the future isn t a rejection of the past. It s just a natural evolution. There are two reasons to read any book: To learn or to be entertained. With The Ascent of Media, Roger Parry manages to do both. We can t wait to see the movie.

From the Publisher