Media has been around for millennia, ever since (according to evolution) the first animals developed the capability of making sound. Thus, they were able to communicate things like “Food” and “Danger” to any other animals in the area (I’m guessing immature males quickly developed a sound for “fart joke” as well, but that’s just me). Anyway, word-of-mouth was born and hasn’t quite dies yet. Cell phones aid it tremendously, and the popularity of stand-up comedy and jokes are a testament to its longevity.
I’m guessing sometime after we developed opposable thumbs, someone discovered that certain liquids could be applied to various surfaces, and art was born. Of course, art may have also been born when people discovered that certain materials hardened when they got dry. Anyway, both paintings and 3D art (statues, carvings, knick-knacks) have been around for many thousands of years. It’s hard to nail down precisely when, because of a lack of knowledge about the culture back then, as well as the materials made for them. Art could be 200,000 years old, but if it was made on an easily eroded surface, we’d have no trace of it.
Also way back when, music was invented (possibly) when a young caveman beat upon a log and made noise, and was immediately surrounded by groupies. The older cavemen told him to cut out that racket “When I was your age, we were happy with a rock that did NOTHING!” Video games back then would have consisted of Log Hero, until Grand Theft Mammoth came out in time for the Pagan Festival season.
Sometime later, someone brilliant came up with the idea of writing language down, although it pretty much resembled wing-dings. We call it cuneiform, but I’m betting they called it something else, mainly because they didn’t speak English back then (“What?” say all the people raised on Hollywood History. It’s true. Way back then, they spoke French. Oh wait). This led to the invention of literature, for which many graduates of university have both thanks (they can get a degree) and ire (ask them what they can do with their degree).
Things continued much this way for quite a while. I’m sure there are many people who think any other forms of media are rubbish (except for theatre. I completely forgot about theatre … just like everyone else) because they were all invented after electricity was discovered. A few years before
Actually, it wasn’t the discovery of electricity that led to an explosion in media, but the discovery it could be generated. Once people could make their own, it was a lot more useful (just like fire). Soon, people were hooking up electricity to everything, just to see if it was better (again, just like fire). But first, around 1860 or so, photography was invented. But when electricity was attached about 20 years later, movies were invented. And the world rejoiced. And promptly turned into a couch potato.
Also around that time, two inventions came about. Thomas Edison found a way to record music (or just took credit for it. He was good at that), and someone discovered that electromagnetic waves could be sent from one point to another without a wire between them. Most underrated discovery ever, in my opinion. Everyone always touts all the other discoveries (Penicillin! Electricity! Long Weekends!) but no one ever thinks twice about the ability to communicate with no direct contact. We no longer have to have a wire to send a message across a continent. We can send it wirelessly. And we discovered it before 1900! This discovery, combined with recorded music, led to radio, and eventually television.
So by then, we had word-of-mouth, art, literature, music, theatre, radio, movies, and TV. And possibly one or two others that slip my mind.
The invention of computers in the fifties led to the inventions of video games (it’s amazing how quick any new invention is turned into a time-waster), and the subsequent video game nerd. Mothers soon bemoaned bespectacled sons who refused to move out of their basements until after middle age. And many jokes were made about the chances of procreation (somewhere between none and zero).
Several years later, the invention on the internet (by Al Gore!) led to either one or many other forms of media. You can say the internet and everything on it is only one form of media, or you can split it up into Blogs, Twitter, Facebook … basically everything that makes up social networks gets broken out into their own specific categories. I dunno. Of course, television and movies can be split into live-action and animation as well, so categories can be as wide or as narrow as you like.
Media is basically any way of disseminating information. It really took off when people started using it for fiction. The thing is, people are greedy. So if something is really popular in one medium, the movers and shakers will try to capitalize on it in another medium. This may be as simple as selling Shakespeare’s plays in book form, to new TV shows based on twitter feeds (“S#*t My Dad Says” coming to CBS this fall. Of course, the got a casting coup in William Shatner himself, playing the dad).
So I figured I’d look at how this impacts movies. Turning things into movies, and turning movies into things. Say there’s a popular video game. It may get made into a movie, with a novelization and a TV show spun off from it. Now instead of a video game, the makers have a franchise. And the broken dreams of all their fanboys.
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