From Smoke Signals to Email: A History of Publishing
It's July, a month of national celebration in Canada (Canada Day), the United States (Independence Day) and France (Bastille Day) among other nations. All that national pride in countries where press freedom flourishes, more or less, started us thinking: How far have we come as publishers since the invention of movable type?
Email publishing has had a fast evolution, from the dawn of time (technogeeks sending messages on local bulletin boards) to the Renaissance (the blooming of Usenet and other linked networks) to today's full-blown mass communication (the Web, rich media, email on your Timex watch). On our worst publishing days, we still have it far easier than those who came before us. Even if they didn't have to worry about their entire subscription list disappearing at the push of a button.
"There are some provocative parallels between the communications changes enabled by networked computers and those enabled by the printing press in its early days. Each defining technology represents an important breakthrough in the ability of humans to communicate with each other; each enables important changes in how we preserve, update and disseminate knowledge; how we retrieve knowledge; the ownership of knowledge; and how we acquire knowledge." - James A. Dewar
James A. Dewar discusses the importance of email publishing and the Internet in his publication "The Information Age and the Printing Press: Looking Backward to See Ahead." You can read the full article online here.
If you're interested in tracing the history of publishing from clay tablets to modern times, this site offers an in-depth, dated chart that'll walk you through time, step by step. From Western Asian scrolls to the first paper mill in Stockholm and the introduction of the first ink jet printer in 1976, this collection of dates and facts is pretty impressive.
If you'd prefer to read about the history of publishing offline, the New York Public Library Research Division maintains a list of recommended reading for those interested in the history of books and printing. Scan this online list of books and check to see if your local library has a copy.
Vicom, Inc., offers an excellent article about the importance of electronic communication. An excerpt from "A Brief History of Email" is below.
"Mankind has always had a compelling desire to communicate. In ancient times this could be verbally or in some form of writing. If remote communication was required (i.e. if the parties were not physically together) then messages had to be physically carried or sent by a messenger. Examples of early forms of remote transmission of messages not requiring a person to actually move between the sender and the receiver would be in 'jungle drum' or 'smoke signal' transmissions. These were somewhat lacking in security and privacy. If 'email' is loosely defined as 'messages transmitted electronically', then the first 'email messages' would have started in the last century with telegraph messages (by wire) and Morse Code transmissions (via airways)." - A Brief History of Email, Vicom, Inc.
The Living Internet offers a wealth of information on both email publishing and the Internet in general.
And, last but not least, if you're wondering who's most responsible for inventing the Internet to begin with, it wasn't Bill Gates and NO, it wasn't Al Gore! The man most responsible is Paul Baran -- a man you probably haven't heard much about. However, he invented a system called Digital Packet Switching, the foundation of the Internet. You can read more about him on several sites, but these two are my favorites here and here.
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