Something in the Air
Mass
media may seem a dominant part of our culture now, yet it is a relatively
recent flutter in civilization’s long march, and for much of the time it has been
around, not all that dominant. Centuries after the invention of the printing
press, after all, most people still couldn’t read.
Getting
around that roadblock, not to mention others like distance and cost, happened only
with the advent of radio. Today it may strike us as a quaint, old-fashioned
device, but it can be said that it was the invention most responsible for
American society as we know it today.
