History re-tweets itself

WRITING ON THE WALL
Tom Standage
Bloomsbury
Rs 299

Tom Standage's Writing on the Wall starts from the premise that social media is not something new.

Ancient Roman towns' houses' walls bustled with written messages the same way as Facebook's walls do today.

The walls were smeared with sex talk and toilet humour that are similar to what we see, and perhaps enjoy, on Facebook: "I screwed a lot of girls here"; "Celadus the Thracian gladiator makes all the girls sigh"; "Secundus defecated here"; "The man I am having dinner with is a barbarian"; "Atimetus got me pregnant"; "Samius to Cornelius: go hang yourself!"; "Virgula to her friend Tertius: you are disgusting!"; "Sarra, you are not being very nice, leaving me all alone like this".

Much like modern social networks, the Romans would also respond to messages. Sample this: "Successus, a weaver, loves the innkeeper's slave girl named Iris. She, however, does not love him. Still, he begs her to have pity on him. His rival wrote this: 'Bye, loser!' The response: 'Envious one, why do you get in the way? Submit to a handsomer man who is being treated very wrongly and is darn good-looking'."

All these are reminders that no matter how much the communication tools change, our behaviour tends to stay the same.

Mr Standage, whose book was first published last year and is being distributed in India now, also traces the nature of the social media in part to the evolution of the social brain. As an example, he points to social grooming among apes and monkeys. It involves, among other things, picking off parasites from another's back, an intensely pleasurable activity, Mr Standage claims. This is the Facebook equivalent of liking someone, and a sure way of building bonds and political status. Imagine how picking lice off someone's back could be used as a political tool.

Then he talks of German priest Martin Luther's 95 theses that "went viral" in 1517. One of his theses asked if the slogan "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, so the soul from purgatory springs" was theologically right. Did payment lead to release from hell? Luther's arguments spread widely among the public, because of the invention of printing. Also, his supporters mounted a provocative multimedia campaign similar to what we see on modern social networks. For example, an attention-grabbing image shows three devils excreting monks.

Then Mr Standage shifts focus to the social media of the 16th century Tudor court in England. In prison or outside it, amorous courtiers would write poetry in a book, passed around for exchanging messages. Today, overheated teenagers communicate secretly on social networks. Similarly, the book provided a refuge from the formality of court life. In captivity, courtiers relished enacting the roles of ill-fated lovers, bemoaning their plight in verse. This is similar to the many shayaris circulated on the mobile messaging platform WhatsApp.

The book says the struggle for press freedom in 17th century England spurred French and American revolutionary thought during the 18th century. In the middle of the 17th century, Mr Standage says, coffee houses changed the way information was distributed in western Europe. They became hotbeds for the sharing and discussion of news and opinion. But just as companies today equate social networking to a waste of time, then, too, it was a worry. Coffee houses were denounced as enemies to hard work. But the mixing of ideas led to innovations in science, commerce and finance, we are told.

Mr Standage says the steam press and the telegraph transformed communication. From being social and decentralised, communication became one-way. The telegraph speeded the transmission of information, helping make newspapers more compelling and more profitable. Telegraph operators would chat with each other by tapping on their keys and listening to the answering clicking sounds. When a wire linked several stations, all the operators joined in the banter, much like an online chat room. Some could recognise their buddies from the style of their Morse code alone.

The years ahead saw a flurry of technological change: radio telegraphy to radio telephony to finally television. The means of communication were suddenly in the hands of the very few and the very rich.

As Mr Standage notes, there was an "us and them" divide. It is here that the social media took a holiday and the one-way mass media took over.

Otherwise, the social media through the ages has remained much the same, but only for the 20th century, when the mass media ruled.

But now, with the rise of the internet, the common man is back again at the controls, says Mr Standage. Mass media journalists are bemoaning the rise of social media users invading their turf. However, Mr Standage assures us this is just history re-tweeting itself.

The 21st century concerns about people being able to broadcast just about anything mirror those of a 17th century clergyman who argued that so many persons printing pamphlets "cast dirt on the faces of many innocent persons, which dried on by continuance of time can never be washed off".

All said, Mr Standage's book could have been more inclusive. It fails to document any social media practices of ancient India. Its gaze never drops from the West. Or am I nit-picking, like the apes?

In any case, I find both the book and the nit-picking intensely pleasurable.