William Bernstein on Communication, Power and the Masters of the Word

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2013

⏱️ 62 minutes

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Summary

William Bernstein talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his latest book, Masters of the Word. Bernstein traces the history of language, writing, and communication and its impact on freedom. The discussion begins with the evolution of language and the written word and continues up through radio and the internet. A particular focus of the conversation is how tyrants use information technology to oppress their people but at the same time, technology can be used to liberate people from oppression.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:06.4	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:11.0	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find links
0:16.3	and other information related to today's conversation.
0:19.0	You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:23.3	back to 2006.
0:25.4	Our email address is maladycontalk.org.
0:28.0	We'd love to hear from you.
0:32.9	Today is April 30, 2013, and my guest is William Bernstein.
0:38.0	His latest book and our topic for today's podcast is Masters of the Word, a media-shaped
0:44.0	history from the alphabet to the internet.
0:46.3	Bill, welcome back to Econ Talk.
0:47.6	Pleasure to be here, Russ.
0:50.6	Your book is about how our ability to communicate with each other has changed over time.
0:55.4	And how this changes affect history.
0:58.2	The big four that you look at are language, writing, printing, and now we're in the middle
1:03.8	of the digital revolution.
1:04.8	I want to start with language and writing.
1:07.2	What were the most important developments and how did they affect history?
1:10.6	Well, if we're going to start from the very beginning, we start roughly 100,000 years
1:16.1	ago, which is the date that most anthropologists find to our ability, the start of our ability
1:24.9	to formulate syntactically dense language, you know, when you and Smith were noodling
	...

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