Man and Media: The Chronology

 In order to understand how the present lifestyle of man came to be, we must move back to Ancient times. A chronological outlook will aid us in understanding the relativity and difference between the present man’s inventions today, mini DVs, and the ancient man’s inventions of myths and the basic tools. All of these are figments of man’s imagination molded into structure, and to comprehend the today’s technological advancement, television, cell phones, radio, etc., we must understand the path man has traveled to get where he is now.

From early on, through research and excavation and other mathematical analysis, we find man to be a thinker and a philosopher. He started by inventing bowls for holding things, wooden shafts for hunting, and developing the Sign Language. He then discovered fire, one of the most significant events in all of mankind’s history, and as we dig further into the past, we find him inventing other tools to sustain himself on the Earth’s crust.

Flash-forwarding through history, we find bigger and more complicated inventions such as language itself, houses, variety of roofs, books, the light bulb, gramophones, scientific advancements and so on and so forth gradually all took place, and got better with each generation. As time commences, the inventions become more complex to make our lives simpler, and finally, we see a compact-era come into play at the present time.

A brief chart will help give us a glimpse through the past and into the present.

Thus, we can see the tools evolving with the history of mankind. Politics also evolved with these technical advancements. Thus, news came into play. News now is used to educate, inform and entertain. This middle activity of informing is what relates politics and news together.

To trace the technological innovations used to generate and distribute news today, we must have a look at how these advancements came to be. Tools were created to make our lives simpler. The more complicated the tool, the easier will it make our lives. Thus, we can see from hunting tools, we had swiftly moved on to making defense mechanisms, from smoke signals which was used to indicate trouble or grab attention, we have modern advertisements involving audio and visual graphics.

Myth and news are both the construction of the human mind. They tend to reflect the thought processes of the people of the time, and are usually broadcasted, be it orally, via print, or electronically, to a certain range. To specify and assess the purpose of the above question, we have stated the definitions of both myth and news, and have unfolded form there on.

 In academic fields, a myth (mythos) is a sacred story concerning the origins of the world or how the world and the creatures in it came to have their present form. The active beings in myths are generally gods and heroes. Myths often are said to take place before recorded history begins. In saying that a myth is a sacred narrative, what is meant is that a myth is believed to be true by people who attach religious or spiritual significance to it. Use of the term by scholars does not imply that the narrative is either true or false. A myth, in popular use, is something that is widely believed but false. This usage, which is often pejorative, arose from labeling the religious stories and beliefs of other cultures as being incorrect, but it has spread to cover non-religious beliefs as well. Because of this usage, many people take offense when the religious narratives they believe to be true are called myths. This usage is frequently confused with fiction, legend, fairy tale, folklore, fable, and urban legend – each of which has a distinct meaning in academia.

News is any new information or information on current events which is relayed by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience. The reporting and investigation of news falls within the profession of journalism. News is often reported by a variety of sources, such as newspapers, television, and radio programs, wire services, and web sites. News reporting is a type of journalism, typically written or broadcast in news style. Most news is investigated and presented by journalists and can be distributed to various outlets via news agents. Commonly, news content should contain the who, what, when, where, why, and how of an event. There should be no questions remaining. Newspapers normally write hard news stories, such as those pertaining to murders, fires, wars, etc. in inverted pyramid style so the most important information is at the beginning.

From the above, we can clearly see that even though myths and news are originated from the same source, the human mind, their basic difference is in that of credibility. News is usually worthwhile reports, with the ability to arouse public interest, whereas myths gravitate towards fiction and ancient times. 

To further highlight the historical development of how we came to be the way we are, we must bounce back some thousand years and walk step by step chronologically.

To aid us further in understanding the spread of news from an origin, we can relate to the following example. The Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) received revelations from the Omnipotent God through the Angel Gabriel (AS). He then told those close to him about what he had received and thus, the word spread verbally. This was how news was circulated in the olden days. Instead of recording news on pen and paper, they were mostly retrieved from the memories of the people.

In its infancy, news gathering was primitive by today’s standards. Printed news had to be phoned in to a newsroom or brought there by a reporter where it was typed and either transmitted over wire services or edited and manually set in type along with other news stories for a specific edition. Today, the term "Breaking News" has become trite as broadcast and cable news services use live satellite technology to bring current events into consumers‘ homes live as it happens. Events that used to take hours or days to become common knowledge in towns or in nations, are fed instantaneously to consumers via radio, television, cell phones and the internet. Most large cities had morning and afternoon newspapers. As the media evolved and news outlets increased to the point of near over saturation, afternoon newspapers were shut down except for relatively few. Morning newspapers have been gradually losing circulation, according to reports advanced by the papers themselves.

Taking a glance over history, we find the Three Heads of Modern Civilization flash incessantly. These consist of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin; each of whom has left theories and help evolve the thinking of the modern man. Also mentionable is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Freud and Marshall Mcluhan. They have each brought in various schools of thinking and these ideas and values have merged into the mind of today’s man. News is essential here, since news enables and ensures that these revolutionary and controversial ideas are raised up in the eyes of the layman; only with the comprehension by the layman of these issues can changes be brought about against the persisting prescribed social restrictive demarcations.

Marshall Mcluhan, author of ‘Understanding Media’ and ‘The Global Village’, has helped, along with others, to create the tetrads which aid in the understanding how media and technology effect and alter our culture and ourselves by expanding our thoughts beyond the "figure". To create a tetrad, and discover insights into any human technology whatsoever, consider any artifact, and ponder these questions:

Enhance:  What does this medium enhance or amplify?
Obsolete:  What does this medium make obsolete?

Retrieval:  What does this artifact retrieve from the past that was previously obsolesced?

Reversal:  What does this artifact reverse into, or, flip into, when pushed to extremes?

I quote some of his sayings on the T.V. tube and the advancement in technology of that time, which remains true to this day.

“Millions of people sitting around the T.V. tube, CNN style, the modern equivalent of shamanistic lore from the authorized source is closely analogous to the old tribal relations of tyrannous instructions and control.”

“Electricity takes us back, converts the world into a circuit of neo-tribal resonance. We are replaying the archetypes of deep human experience, the exemplary models of psychic and solid reality.”

“In the electric age, when our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we essentially participate, in depth in the consequences of our everyday action. It is no longer possible to adopt aloof and dissociated role of the literate Westerner.”

Myths and news, both being devices of the mind, are intertwined yet divided. Thus, we are averted by them. All this high-tech stuff should be considered as merely a tool for a greater purpose: the effective communication of ideas and information. It’s only the ideas and feelings that have a chance of enduring. The medium which is in our control can be used either to provide audiences with time-wasting, mindless, drivel or with ideas that can make a positive difference in the overall scheme of things. Thus, through news we can shape our thoughts and we can ‘preach’ our ways of thinking, the ethical and moral way of thinking, to the people.