Thursday, November 19, 2015
Milestones in the Evolution of Mass Media, Up to the World Wide Web
Milestones in the Evolution of Mass Media, Up to the Wide World Web
By Prof. Mauri Yambo
In 1999 I first put together, from various sources, a tabular chronology of milestones in the global evolution of mass media. The timeline covers a hugely long period, from c. 1,490,000 BC to the advent of the Internet (AD 1969) and the Wide World Web (AD 1990). In-between those temporal 'boundaries', many amazing things, many inventions, happened in the domain of human communication; sometimes, when we look back now, in slow-motion intervals, and often in relatively quick successions.
[Click on the heading above to see the chronology]
Consider this: Without the Internet, there would have been no World Wide Web. Without both, and without the telephone, there would be no Google or Facebook, no Twitter or YouTube. There would be no email or WhatsApp or Instagram or SMS. There would be no credit card and ATM, and no M-Pesa. There simply would be no life as we have come to know it here on earth.
New evidence, come upon since that 2003 tabulation, suggests that verbal communication, or speech -- made possible by a mutation in the FOXP2 gene, also known as the language gene -- in fact became possible nearly 1.25 million years later than suggested in the table. That's only 250,000 years or so ago!
PS: You can also find the milestones on pp. 21-22 at this link
READ: Jolie O'Dell (2011) "The History of Social Media"
[CSO 403, CSO 501]
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
China In Africa + Remembering Zheng He's (Cheng Ho's) Epic 15th Century Voyages
China's links with Africa go back five centuries at least, with huge gaps in time in-between, of course. It is a history with many awe-inspiring and charming anecdotes (and not a whiff of colonization or slave trading) -- including reciprocal visits by Kenyans, so long ago (nobody tells us, though, whether they ever returned to our dear motherland). It tells of the export to China, by Chinese voyagers themselves, of giraffes and, you got it, celestial horses (zebras), which ordinary Chinese, royalty and glitterati simply couldn't get over. We hear of the gift, to a Malindi prince, of a 'dwarf' bride from some Chinese province. Truth of strangers bearing gifts, and only gifts, then. Wonder how much she cried when the last ship in the last armada left Malindi port. Wonder what it took to soothe her, and what became of her, there in Malindi. Wonder what language dey spake ober dere inde streets of Beijing, and if there was ever a hint of sheng, a gift of it, there, already.
What prompted me to write this piece, belatedly (I admit), is a re-reading of a March 2010 piece in Time magazine about China's seeming encroachment into Africa, some people else's imagined spheres of influence; including its not-too-unflattering allusion to the exploits of that great commander and voyager, Zheng He (Cheng Ho has a better ring, and read, though).
READ More on China in Africa Here
That Time piece also reminded me profoundly of Joseph Needham -- whom I first encountered a decade or so ago off the shelves of the Main Library (JKML) at the University of Nairobi (UoN) -- who spent decades writing wonderful scientific-historical narratives about China.
In there somewhere in all that amazingly voluminous text is also to be found, if I remember correctly (I have rather 'copious' soft notes on this somewhere, which I cannot get to just now), his own account of Admiral Zheng He's (Cheng Ho's) epic voyages, including a visit to what was to become Kenya -- in my father's time and, so, mine -- so long after he'd gone. In there, yes, as an integral part of his own epic, meticulously researched, account of China's deep-rooted and multi-faceted contribution (little acknowledged in the West) to important aspects modern science and technology.
One of the great mysteries of history, I think, was China's dramatic withdrawal from all that sea-faring, all that going, some fifty years or so before the Portuguese, spearheaded by Vasco DaGama, rounded the South African cape and sailed up the Eastern African coast. World history would very likely have turned out very differently from what it became, had the Portuguese met and provoked the Chinese armada, in its full swing off East African; for they (the Portuguese) would most likely have been blown out of the water. But 'fate' would not have it thus, and colonial (and world) history unfolded as we know it did -- all the way to the Indian sub-continent, and Hong Kong, and Macau.
Edward L. Dreyer (who reassures my recollection of Needham's account of Cheng Ho's exploits) might not agree with this reverse-history of mine -- OK, hypothesis -- which I have espoused for a few years. I am just finding out via a cursory reading of his Roads Not Taken chapter, just now accessed for the first time, as I get set to post this piece. I'm finding out that not everything was all that rosy; for there was a rot accumulating under the military might of the Ming Dynasty, even as Cheng Ho proudly carried the flag to distant waters. So be it, for now.
Read these excerpts, for a taste of what Needham had to say (do make time):
1. Science and Civilization in China. Vol I: Introductory Orientations
2. Science and Civilization in China. Vol IV: 3 Civil Engineering and Nautics
3. Science and Civilization in China. Vol VII: 2: General Conclusions and Reflections
What prompted me to write this piece, belatedly (I admit), is a re-reading of a March 2010 piece in Time magazine about China's seeming encroachment into Africa, some people else's imagined spheres of influence; including its not-too-unflattering allusion to the exploits of that great commander and voyager, Zheng He (Cheng Ho has a better ring, and read, though).
READ More on China in Africa Here
That Time piece also reminded me profoundly of Joseph Needham -- whom I first encountered a decade or so ago off the shelves of the Main Library (JKML) at the University of Nairobi (UoN) -- who spent decades writing wonderful scientific-historical narratives about China.
In there somewhere in all that amazingly voluminous text is also to be found, if I remember correctly (I have rather 'copious' soft notes on this somewhere, which I cannot get to just now), his own account of Admiral Zheng He's (Cheng Ho's) epic voyages, including a visit to what was to become Kenya -- in my father's time and, so, mine -- so long after he'd gone. In there, yes, as an integral part of his own epic, meticulously researched, account of China's deep-rooted and multi-faceted contribution (little acknowledged in the West) to important aspects modern science and technology.
One of the great mysteries of history, I think, was China's dramatic withdrawal from all that sea-faring, all that going, some fifty years or so before the Portuguese, spearheaded by Vasco DaGama, rounded the South African cape and sailed up the Eastern African coast. World history would very likely have turned out very differently from what it became, had the Portuguese met and provoked the Chinese armada, in its full swing off East African; for they (the Portuguese) would most likely have been blown out of the water. But 'fate' would not have it thus, and colonial (and world) history unfolded as we know it did -- all the way to the Indian sub-continent, and Hong Kong, and Macau.
Edward L. Dreyer (who reassures my recollection of Needham's account of Cheng Ho's exploits) might not agree with this reverse-history of mine -- OK, hypothesis -- which I have espoused for a few years. I am just finding out via a cursory reading of his Roads Not Taken chapter, just now accessed for the first time, as I get set to post this piece. I'm finding out that not everything was all that rosy; for there was a rot accumulating under the military might of the Ming Dynasty, even as Cheng Ho proudly carried the flag to distant waters. So be it, for now.
Read these excerpts, for a taste of what Needham had to say (do make time):
1. Science and Civilization in China. Vol I: Introductory Orientations
2. Science and Civilization in China. Vol IV: 3 Civil Engineering and Nautics
3. Science and Civilization in China. Vol VII: 2: General Conclusions and Reflections
Monday, November 16, 2015
Notes on Social Differentiation and Social Change
NOTES ON SOCIAL
DIFFERENTIATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Prof. Mauri
Yambo
1.
Introduction: Conceptualizing Social Differentiation:
Leading scholars have sought to understand the process of
differentiation in society over time, and have come up with a variety of useful
conceptions and explanations. Among these scholars, whom students are called
upon to read in order to likewise understand and explain (and thus to carry the
baton forward), are Herbert Spencer[1] (1897)[2], Emile Durkheim (2014)[3], Max Weber (1947: 424-429)[4], Ferdinand Toennies
(2001)[5], Georg Simmel, Talcott
Parsons (1964: 339-357) and Niklas Luhmann (1987, 1995)[6]. All have looked at how societies evolve over
time, based on the forms of complexity that arise inside them and the dissimilarities
that perforce emerge among their members, driven by the inevitable pressures
and contradictions of nature and nurture. I use ‘nurture’ here as an umbrella
term for the multiplicity of ways in which “society, polity, economy and
culture”, and even nature, affect us all – even as we, in turn, variously
affect them...
[CSO 103, CSO 501, Theory]
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