social media history

The copyright of images belong to their authors. I will remove them on demand. Contact me at adrian.holzer@epfl.ch

Social Media

Denis Gillet & Adrian Holzer

The first 2000 years

“Media we get from other people exchanged along social links, creating distributed discussion or community”

When did you last check Facebook?

25%of the time spent online

WHY

We are social animalsSocial cues enable primates to work better in groups

1

Social cues are assessed through information sharing

2Gossip

breaks space and time boundaries

3 Technology

Writing

3400BC Uruk

First letter

2600BC

Egypt

Ostracism

Athens510BC

Literacy was on the rise

Socrates“[people who read] will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing”

Roman Tablets

100BC

Acta DiurnaProceedings of the senate

44BC

1440 Gutenberg

Printing

1517

Luther 95 theses

If only known men print, this inconvenience [heresy, treason, seditious libels] is avoided

Regulation Censorship

Worshipful Company of Stationers

Coffee houses

coffee houses & salons created a public sphere

http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/courses_readings/phil123-net/publicness/

Habermas

“Why doth solid and serious learning decline, and few or none follow it now in the university?”

http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/courses_readings/phil123-net/publicness/

“Because of the coffee-houses where they spend all their time.”Anthony Wood

Oxford 1670

“learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government, God keep us from both” Gov William Berkely Virginia 1671

1690

Thomas Paine1775

Penny Papers

http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/courses_readings/phil123-net/publicness/

selling audience to advertisers

coffee houses & salons created a public sphere

http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/courses_readings/phil123-net/publicness/

Habermas

coffee houses & salons created a public sphere

http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/courses_readings/phil123-net/publicness/

Habermas

mass media turned the critical public into passive consumer public

FROM

TO

Telegraph

1843

Radio

1894

Television

1926

ARPANET

1969

1970s - public bulletin board system BBS

YUMYUMRestaurant reviews

http://www.kaleberg.com/yumyum/index.html

1976

WEB

1990 Tim Berners-Lee

SixDegrees.comfirst friend list

1997

BLOGs

1999

2002

2003

First news feed

2006Mostly news feed

2010Mobile Social Media

2011

Temporary Social Media

“Fill the world with pamphlets and books

that are foolish, ignorant , malignant,

libelous, […] and such is the flood that even things that have done

some good lose all their goodness.”

Erasmus 1466-1536

The copyright of images belong to their authors. I will remove them on demand. Contact me at adrian.holzer@epfl.ch