CS100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Imperial Cult, Shang Dynasty
16 Sep 2013
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Document Summary
The beginning of communications is impossible to pinpoint but not hard to imagine. As the world became increasingly complex the need for extrasomatic memory became important (memory outside the body). This led to the development of media to store and retrieve information. They resembled ideograms (conventionalized signs that do not look like what they represent) these were the basis of the worlds first writing system. Harold innis: dealt with time and space concept, and thought communications deserved disciplinary or sub-disciplinary status. Bulk of his project dealt with ancient empires and early western civilization: elaborated history of comm. around a few core subjects, the most significant on pertains to time and space. Old world civilizations had a specific cultural orientation that was spatial or temporal. (derived in part by the dominant medium it employed) Stone in egypt was durable, a time-based medium. It favored a centralized absolute government and divine kingship.
