Does media history really start with a bang? More than just newspapers,
television, and social networks, media are the means by which any
information is communicated, from cosmic radiation traces to medieval
church bells to modern identity documents. Cultures are held together as
much by bookkeeping and records as they are by stories and myths.From
Big Bang to Big Data is a long history of the media - how it has been
established, used, and transformed from the beginning of recorded time
until the present. It is not primarily a story of revolutions and
innovations, but of continuities and overlaps that reveal surprising
patterns across history. Many media were invented as ways to store and
share information, and many have served as powerful tools for
administration and control. The concerns raised about media today,
whether about privacy, piracy, or anxieties over declining cultural
standards, preoccupied earlier generations too. In a playful style,
accompanied by more than one hundred illustrations, the authors show us
how every society has been a media society in its own way.From antique
graffiti to last year's viral YouTube clip, the past is only
approachable through media. From Big Bang to Big Data provides a new way
of thinking about media in history - and about human societies past and
present.
