Evolution of Media & Society: An Analysis

The evolution of media and the evolution of society is interdependent on each other. Right from the primitive period, humans have been looking out for ways to incorporate strategies and methods to pass on their message from one place to another, from one part of the world to another. Media, in some way shape, or form has provided this platform to the masses to communicate with each other as per their requirements and as per their needs and financial backgrounds. According to a study conducted at the University of California in San Diego, American households used up a whopping amount of information worth 3.6 zettabytes in 2008 alone, which equals to a 7-foot long pile of books covering the entirety of the United States.

According to Ramsey’s research in 2009, this was a 350% increase in the amount of information consumption in comparison to that in 1980. On average, we all have been exposed to media intake and uptake in some way or another, whether we like it or not. Be it at home, in our workplaces, the restaurant, in shopping malls, and even our cars and taxi cabs. Media is everywhere! Whether we acknowledge it or not, but the truth is that we are where we are today because of the influence that media has over us. Our social advancements, be it from human dwellings to the way we think, act or behave, it is all influenced by media and the technological innovations it brought with it.

The most integral of roles of media is obviously entertainment for the mere purpose of escapism. The example that I’d like to quote here is the change that was brought about in people’s lives in the era of the Industrial Revolution. With the advent of machinery and the incorporation of technology in people’s lives, they had more time to spend doing absolutely nothing because the introduction of machinery cut their time of manual labor short. They kept looking out for ways in which they could spend their time being entertained and hence they turned to read books, mainly novels. Books, a form of media in its right, were bought, shared, and consumed in massive numbers during and after the Industrial Revolution marked its footprint. To cater to the huge demand, books were being written and printed in vast amounts.  Specifically, after the period of 1830 and 40’s newspapers and books in general, were in high demand.

Years passed by, the society changed from preferring books to e-books, which led to the introduction of Amazon Kindle on 19^th November 2007 which changed the whole reading game forever. People did not have the need to carry huge piles and heaps of books around because the little device could store them in its memory for people to read from on the go. It was compact, tangible and to most people out there, pretty pocket-friendly too. From the example above, we learned that because of the evolution of society, media evolved itself too; from print to digital and smart.

In another example that I’ll be providing next, we would shed light on how the evolution of media influenced the evolution in society too. In terms of education, the introduction of forums like the Google Classroom, Turn It In, Khan Academy Online Lectures on YouTube, etc. have paved way for students to open arenas for remote and distance learning. Getting an education is no more a problem even if people are thousands of miles away from their institutes. As long as they have an internet connection, they can easily gain access to all these forums, assign or submit coursework and assignments, and most of all, even appear for exams while being in the comfort of their homes. Recently, the top university of the world, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) posted its online lectures, notes, and audio and video recordings from world-class professors which are accessible to anybody with an internet connection on an online site called opencourseware.com.

Towards me, one way that the evolution of media has influenced the evolution of society in a negative manner is that nameless, faceless people on public forums and social media bully and harass people, mock them and exploit them in inexplicable ways without even being held accountable for their actions. This extent of cyber-crime has leveraged and led to people committing suicides, developing mental health sicknesses, and even destroying interpersonal relationships. According to a Media Analyst’s words, “the medium is the message (McLuhan, 1964)”. What Marshall McLuhan meant was that every medium presents information in a different way and while some mediums have their pros, they also come with a number of setbacks, as in the example quoted above about social media platforms. While it is predominantly a redeemable option to stay connected to people, it also brings a Pandora box of troubles and whatnot. In the same light, Alan Kay in 1994 said “Each medium has a special way of representing ideas that emphasize particular ways of thinking and de-emphasize others”.

All in all, the rule of thumb is pretty simple. To gauge whether media became smarter because the society did or society became smarter because media did, is a hard battle. People in different notions, from different backgrounds ethnicities, and availability of resources, have different opinions about it. But the staggering truth remains unturned, we are all heavily dependent on media in general and media is heavily dependent on us for mass consumption and hence bringing in revenue. An example that I’d like to quote here is the evolution of television and its content just like the evolution of its mass consumers, us! In a Pakistani context, we went from having only three channels at our disposal to hefty thousands of them in a matter of fifty years straight.

With the advent of streaming sites such as Netflix and Amazon Prime etc., the kind of content that we prefer to watch has also changed dramatically. So, needless to say, that to deduce whether cultural changes and shifts occurred due to technology and media is difficult. But we know for sure that they are heavily dependent on one another.

Read about New Media as an Agent of Change here.