Divine Information and the Unrecognized Mass - Information Evolution Part 1

This is Part 1 of a 3-part series named "Information Evolution". The series explore the evolution of information technologies and the 3 stages of its existence. Read Part 2 here: A “Connectivity” Revolution and the Empowered Public - Information Evolution Part 2.

In the early part of human history (before early-modern), a limited amount of information technologies was presented. The primary way for people to retain their ideas and thoughts in physical form was through writing, making the production and reproduction of preservable information slow and laborious. The inefficiency in the production of preservable texts coincided with the inadequacy of proper writing surfaces. The earliest writing planes were usually unprocessed local materials, including stones, bones, metals, etc., making the generation of texts even more difficult. From the classical period to the medieval, inventions of paper-like writing surfaces slowly emerged. The use of papyrus can be dated back to 3000BC in the ancient Egyptian civilizations, yet the production of papyrus was exceptionally costly and challenging due to the inadequacy of technology and scarcity of raw materials. Although the invention of papyrus served to preserve the text, the writing surface was particularly fragile, as the material can quickly decay in a slightly humid environment, making it less desirable for long-term preservation. Parchment became a more popular media of writing in Europe after the collapse of the Roman empire. Parchment as a writing media is made from animal hides, which makes the material more durable and accessible from local environments[1]. The existence of paper rise at the dawn of the second century in China, as Ts’ai Lun invented the papermaking process, but it took hundreds of years before the craft made its way first to the middle east and later to Europe[2]. Despite the appearance of these more durable and appropriate writing surfaces, the production process is somewhat preliminary. The time and cost to produce papers and parchments in early ages made them a rare “luxury.”

Not only is there an inadequacy of the information-preservation technology, but in early times, the lack of technology also made information hard to distribute. In 490 BC, the Greek messenger Pheidippides had to travel across the entire distance from Marathon to Athens to convey the victorious message, signifying the helpless fact that even the most important information has to take a tremendous amount of time and effort to deliver. While the major mediums to carry information were limited to spoken words and scarce writing, the primary method to deliver a message was confined to foot or horse. The difficulty in exchanging information grew exponentially with the increase in geographical space. As a result, communication could either happen verbally on a regional basis or cost distant agents a tremendous amount of time to complete only one round of communication.

The lack of information technologies shapes two distinct patterns of ideas in the system. On the one hand, the scarcity of preservable texts makes certain information divine. Writings and texts exist, but only in a minimal amount, so they are possessed by only a small group of individuals. With the existence of a government (a general reference to the ruling party), material capabilities were largely concentrated at the top (a very Weber-style assumption), and preservable texts and information technologies were no exception. Text possession is highly centralized, with the important texts possessed by the narrow elites of the state. The ability to interpret and transmit the limited number of texts thus also fell into the hand of rulers. The scarcity of information-preserving technologies sanctifies the texts due to their rarity. State-initiated ideas (appealing to sacred texts) were propagated in the system. The flow of the “divine information” from top to bottom allowed the state ideas to quickly gain influence to be the dominant norm at the time. The pattern of divine information from the top was evident in the spiritual sector. The reproduction of preserved information has always been related to the religious elites[3]. The asymmetry of literacy and preservable information between the top and the bottom allowed the literate top to “educate” the illiterate mass. The ruling church owned the holy text, while the public did not. The church disseminated its interpretation of the sacred text to the people through missionaries. Clergies are the only suppliers of written information[4], and people were indoctrinated by the ideas (religious teachings) from the top.

The secular authorities also reinforce their ideologies through the monopoly of texts and information transmission systems. In ancient China, the only channel of upward societal mobilization is through KeJu (Imperial Examination), and it is the life goal of the public to gain social status through the examination. The emperor possessed all the texts and determined the texts people must read to pass the examination. The accessibility of the information was strictly under the influence of the state. The public, due to their limited access to the text, considered the emperor-directed texts as the ShengXianShu (Books of Sages). The divine information from the top often included ideas like loyal to your emperor and the mandate of heaven, which makes the state-oriented ideas more influential and the prevalent ideology of the system.

Popular information, on the other hand, was hard to be recognized. Due to the lack of information-preserving technologies, when an idea was raised by the public, it was hard for the idea to be preserved or retained. Popular ideas existed more frequently in the form of words than in writing. Oral culture was prevalent during the early eras across the globe. Due to the lack of information-transmission technologies, it remained impossible for ideas to spread and communicate on a larger scale even if a promising idea was established. Ideas were regularly exchanged only at the level of local society. The lack of information technologies shaped the low interconnectivity of disparate ideas. Popular ideologies may thrive in their respective communities, yet little connection can be established among them. Popular ideas were thus bounded by the material constraint of geographical range and inadequacy of informational technologies, and it is hard for them to gain influence to become the ideological context of the society.

The disparate ideological mechanisms of the state and the public led to a legitimation mode of state sovereignty. With state sovereignty, the state monopolized control over norms. The ideological influence within the system was drafted from the top (the state) and diffused into the bottom (the civil society). There was no feedback from the public due to material constraints, and popular ideas were unlikely to make their way to become a potential social norm. Thus, the popular groups owned little right in determining ideologies in effect. State sovereignty created a two-fold ideological culture in the society, which includes the great culture of the top few and the little culture of the public[5]. The great culture is comprised of ideas from ruling elites, like the justification of the monarch rule from the head of the state and the dominant religious ideologies of Christendom. These ideas were the governing ideologies at the time and were characterized by tradition and continuity. The little culture, on the contrary, was spontaneous and random products of the relatively illiterate village communities.[6] They were highly diverse and were different among separated communities. While the great culture significantly molded the little culture like a divine and authoritative guide, the little public ideas and tradition cannot exert an equitable, if not zero, influence on the top. Situated in an environment with premature information technologies, popular ideas were the unrecognized mass.