Dead Media through the Millennia

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ORICL Lecture #1, Spring Qtr, 2002
Dead Media through the Millennia
by Robert Kennedy, P.E.
robot@ultimax.com

Slide presentation for the Oak Ridge Institute of Continued Learning (31Jan2002)

a generalized communications medium

content may be written, aural, visual

communication may be symmetric or not

channel have more than one node, i.e. network, and network may have more than one mode

channel can be real time or delayed

any or all of these elements may be extinct to be “dead media”

drilling through the onion I: Languages

over human history, ~100K languages emerged

now, ~6K human languages extant
of which ~200 are written routinely
plus several hundred machine languages

90% of both classes are moribund/extinct
projected ~500 languages by 2100

languages are organic, like life:
in constant flux without recording
simplicity, regularity are signs of maturity
uniformity over range, ubiquity are sign of youth, radiation
languages and media die when they fail to attain critical mass

The “Cambrian explosion” of languages occurred in prehistory

writing, recorded media tend to arrest evolution of language

drilling through the onion II: Writing

“extrasomatic information storage across space and time”; transcended limitation of face-to-face, real time

though it can be artistic, writing is different than art: regular, repeatable, unambiguous, e.g., Mayan glyphs vs. Gothic gargoyles

truly unique writing systems are extremely rare
If it were easy, there would have been as many systems of writing as there were media. Instead there have been only 3-4 demonstrably unique systems in all of human history. 2 of these systems are dead. All others are result of blueprint copying (Greek, Hebrew -> Cyrillic) or idea diffusion (e.g. Sequoyah). The survivors are alphabets and ideograms, and ideograms might not be unique.
“Truly, there is nothing new under the Sun.”
-Voltaire (but he was just quoting Ecclesiastes!)

3 major strategies, in order of frequency:

alphabets (1 symbol per phoneme, e.g., Roman letters, Celtic runes, Braille, Cherokee, Irish ogham)

logograms (1 symbol per word-concept, e.g., Arabic numerals, punctuation, Japanese kanji, some Chinese, Sumerian cuneiform, heiroglyphs)

syllabaries (1 symbol per syllable, e.g., Linear B, Japanese kana, Korean han'gül)

all systems are hybrids; no system uses one pure strategy

3-4 unique loci of writing, in order of antiquity:

Locus: Sumer - circa 3000 BCE
99+% of all writing systems ever developed are alphabetic, highly evolved or transmitted via idea diffusion, from ancestral Sumerian cuneiform to Egyptian heiroglyphs to Semitic alphabets (current users ~80% of race):
(a) old Arabian evolved into modern Ethiopian
(b) Aramaic evolved into modern Arabic, Hebrew, Indian, SE Asian
(c) Phoenician evolved into modern Roman, Cyrillic
necessary innovations:
(a) identity (1 symbol/consonant),
(b) mnemonic order A-B-C (aleph is for “ox”, beth is for “house”, gimel is for “camel”),
(c) written vowels

Locus: Crete? - circa 1700 BCE
probably syllabic, sole example “Phaistos disk” found 1908, first printed document in history, undeciphered, Thira - most energetic event in recorded history ~3000 megaton-equivalents, extinct circa 1500 BCE

Locus: China - circa 1300 BCE
logographic; possibly ancient diffusion of writing idea from Fertile Crescent; evolving to syllabic/phonetic in different cultures; current users ~20% of race

Locus: Mesoamerica - circa 600 BCE
logographic; puns (rebi), zero, superb predictive calendar, extinct circa 1000 CE.

drilling through the onion III: Ciphering

need for security (authentication, low probability of detection/intercept, antispoofing) since Day One

at first, security by obscurity, limiting literacy to the elite, official xenophobia and class orthodoxy, punishing unauthorized communication

nowadays, infosec by math, machine

drilling through the onion IV: Media

“Everything is media”
- credo of postindustrial art

the “Cambrian explosion” of media occurred during Industrial Revolution; 99% of forms created and abandoned since circa 1700

physical examples (Korean horse post medallions, analog Videophone) forthcoming at end of quarter?

******************************
THE MASTER-LIST OF DEAD MEDIA
will appear soon
******************************

Sources

1. Master List courtesy of those dedicated necronauts over at The Dead Media Project.

2. Diamond, Jared Guns, Germs, and Steel, (W.W.Norton, New York: 1997).

3. DeCamp, L. Sprague Ancient Engineers, The, (Dorset: 1990).

RECOMMENDED:
4. Zinsser, Hans Rats, Lice, and History, (Bantam: 1960).

5. MacNeill, William Plagues and Peoples, (Anchor/Doubleday: 1976).

6. MacNeill, William Pursuit of Power, The, (Univ. of Chicago Press: 1982).

About the Speaker

RK at NASA Goldstone deep space antenna, 8K Robert Kennedy is president of the Ultimax Group Inc., a corporation distributed across 11 time zones from Moscow to L.A. He speaks enough languages to start bar fights in all of them. Robotics engineer, amateur historian, and jack of all trades, he spent 1994 working for the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Space as ASME’s Congressional Fellow. On the Sputnik anniversary in October 1997, he managed to make the Russian evening news. Robert telecommutes from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he resides with his wife, numerous cats, the occasional horse, and a yard full of trees and Detroit iron.

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