Man is a by nature is curious. Ever since this creature set foot on land it has always been inquisitive. Curiosity often times come in the form of questions and these questions need answers. This drives the creature to know what is happening in the surroundings including the creatures in it. Knowing the answers gave it a confidence of what future activities need to be done by whom, where and when. This thirst to know what is going on and where is known today as news. Most Arab nations tune in to the
Daily Arab News.
Conveying events to people by way of mouth can often be catastrophic especially in times of war. In the day of yore transfer of knowledge on events that happen on other lands was sloppy and slow. It was the job of a runner to go to other communities to extract significant episodes and relay it back to where the rider came from. This makes it more time consuming for the knowledge to be imparted.
The domestication of the horse gave impetus the way of knowing what took place in other localities. The horse speed multiplied that of a man. It could cover huge distances in a shorter time. This made it possible for people to send it together the rider to several places in a given span of time. Even though the use of horse made travel shorter, information was still given through mouth.
The spreading of stories by word of mouth is always fraught with inaccuracies. Things that really did happen not be intentionally or unintentionally added and things that did not really happen may be included as though it happened. The accurate description of an occurrence depends heavily on the perspective of carriers and the days of old as it is today. The sole medium is man.
Along the banks of the Nile grows a plant that became one of the major mediums of written history. This plant was the papyrus. When man first learned the skill of writing, this was the material that was used. Although ancient texts survive today, it was only because it was safely store in tightly sealed jars, otherwise this material easily broke up into pieces.
Juices from trees eventually was tapped and in combination with minute pieces of wood turned into paper. This easy to produce material became a medium for writing for centuries even up to this day. It is light and durable. It can be folded or rolled. Together with the four legged creature and the biped known as man, it help spread stories along the breadth and width of a community and across borders.
Writing by hand was the common practice in the olden days. Copying text from the original into copies was a tedious task and involved people who had to know how to read and write. Mass producing articles was a labor intensive enterprise. Nevertheless, this helped in the faster dissemination of events.
The pieta, the great statue of David, the last supper, the Sistine cathedral, all marvels of art and engineering were done at the time of the renaissance. This was a period of scientific and technological advances that debunked many beliefs espoused by religion. The printing press was a product from this period and it is still in use today in some form or another. It made mass production of written texts possible. A single sheet of article written on paper could be now reproduced a thousand times over.
Today news can be gathered or heard in a variety of ways as technology advanced through the years. Telegraphy and telephony were once used during the early nineteen hundreds but today modern man has many means available. Radio broadcasts are heard daily. Network television provides news daily and the latest technology using computers and the internet has made the world a very small place indeed.
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