Interesting virus spreads among us

There’s a virus that probably came into being more than 100,000 years ago. It singled out one species and has followed it throughout its history, creeping into every crevice of its existence. From generation to generation, the virus has spread until every member of that species on the planet has caught it.

Language is the virus, and it has raced across history like a wildfire. It has provided people with the tools needed to build civilizations, to warehouse ideas, to record successes and failures and to build again, only better and stronger. It can be argued, of course, that other species have language. For example, whales communicate, but the messages are fleeting, disappearing as quickly as they arrive, and each new generation of whales faces the onerous task of starting from scratch. For whales, learning is a lonely, singular business. There is no building upon the knowledge of previous generations, no storage of ideas and certainly no progress.

Clearly, language is one of God’s greatest gifts to humankind. The ability to communicate has changed us perhaps more than any other human skill in history. Language has pushed the development of civilization at such a quickened pace that at times it seems to be spinning like a top, the centrifugal force flinging new technological advances outward at an ever-increasing rate.

The story of our more recent advances in language and information transmission, printed and electronic communication, is the story of the mass media and their effect on society, culture, economics and politics in America.

History and the media constitute a combining of the past and the present. Since history is the story and analysis of change and continuity and journalism is a record of current and significant events, the two exist on different planes while remaining essentially one and the same.

Journalism is much more than “history on the run.” It plays a major role in creating the present, and, in so doing, it plays a significant role in constructing the future.

But back to the past. Information, news, if you will, changed life in every conceivable manner because it changed the people who received it. The process is relatively simple.

Once people had something to read, they began to learn how to read. Once enough people could read, space began to shrink. The world became a smaller place as people learned more about their world. As technology advanced and the speed of sending information increased, time began to shrink.

This is what happened about 6,000 B.C. as humans began to move from a nomadic existence of hunting and scavenging to farming. Farming meant staying in the same area, building villages, then towns. And that meant that to conduct business and improve social life, written language was needed. Written language became a reality and paved the way for better communication. Unlike the spoken word that lasted only as long as the sound, the written word could be saved and used for business and social reasons.

Then during the 15th century, we see the coming of moveable type, which essentially pulled us out of the Dark Ages into a renaissance of ideas because with print ideas could be spread widely and often. A medieval world that resisted changed for centuries suddenly became more modern and year after year, century after century, monarchies fell and democracies emerged as more and more common people were exposed to new ideas and new ways of doing things.

Now we are in the midst of another information age, this one led not by moveable type but the Internet and other technologies. We may not know what exactly lies in our future, but one thing is certain: Our lives will change and they will change fast.

In every period, society has been affected by the informational system in place. This has been true since the time of Jesus, Columbus and Mozart, since the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the publication of George Orwell’s “1984.”

The inescapable conclusion: Information changes attitudes and attitudes change history.