Martin Gurri's Five Waves
and the transition from mass media to free-for-all
Back in the day I proposed Three Ages of Communication. I shortened it to this at The American Spectator.
Age of Parchment: Writers write, monks in monasteries create illuminated manuscripts by hand in their monastic cells. Gatekeeper: The Abbot.
Age of Gutenberg: Writers write, printer’s devils convert the written word into print. Gatekeeper: The Editor.
Age of Free-for-all: Writers write, and press Publish. Gatekeeper: The… (oh no!)
And when I first wrote about it I was commenting on a piece by Martin Gurri at The Free Press: “The Revenge of the Normies.”
I now realize that Gurri has a Five Wave theory of communication that he presents in his book The Revolt of the Public.
Invention of Writing: it led to a form of government dependent on a mandarin or priestly class.
Development of the Alphabet: classical world and literate citizens.
Printing press and moveable type: printed books and pamphlets.
Mass Media Age: Industrial I-talk-you-listen mode of information.
Fifth Wave: cataclysmic expansion of information and communication technology.
So you see that Gurri has two vital additions to my concept. First, that writing with an alphabet extends the amount of literacy, because it makes literacy easier. Second, I missed out the Mass Media Age characterized by one-way communication by national newspapers, radio, and TV that are all under the thumb of the ruling class.
By the way: did you know that Gurri was a CIA analyst back in the day?
In his piece on “The Revenge of the Normies” Gurri makes the point that we are dealing with The Normies vs. The Elites.
The normies want to get on with life. They want to work, get married, have children—boring stuff. That’s what normal means.
The elites… wish to change everything: sex, the climate, our history, your automobile, your diet, even… straws... For them there is no good and evil, no right and wrong, only oppressors and oppressed… “Social justice” translates neatly into “elite control.”
Everything was so simple for the Elite in the days of one-way mass media. But now, with the internet, the Elite is fit to be tied because they can’t control the Narrative.
Yes, back in the day the Elite could afford to wax enthusiastic about free expression, because back in the day free expression meant free expression for the Elite and very limited expression for the Normies. Today, as Hillary Clinton so aptly says, the danger is “we lose total control.”
Of course, all this means chaos. Instead of nicely curated Mass Media we now have armies of podcasters and SubStackers. Oh and conspiracy theorists. Over at unz.com Ron Unz thinks that maybe the Intelligence Community (ours and others) is getting into the conspiracy theory game in order to muddy the waters of the Age of Free-for-all.
Anyway, I think it is important to think through the progession of the last three Waves. The point about the Third Wave, what I call the Age of Gutenberg, is that it created a whole new educated class beyond the Church and the Court. I’m reading a biography of Karl Marx, and the author Isaiah Berlin talk about the intellectual frenzy of Paris in the 1840s.
A remarkable councourse of poets, painters, musicians, writers, reformers and theorists had gathered in the French capital… A common mood of passionate protest against the old order… The emotions were intensely cultivated… [and] expressed in ardent phrases… by men who were prepared to stake their live upon them…
Marx was typical. He worked in Paris “editing a new journal to be called Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher”.
But by the turn of the century we are into the Age of Mass-Media and big circulation national newspapers. By the 1930s we have radio and FDR’s “fireside chats.”
Is it pure accident that in the 20th century we get big government and world wars? Or is all that a natural feature of the Age of Mass-Media?
The point to remember is that Donald Trump is comfortable with the new media. His style, even when making speeches from a podium, is conversational. E.g., at UnHerd.com Sam Kahn writes in “Donald Trump: new media king”:
Trump’s podcast blitz over the last few months — on Kick with Ross, on X with Elon Musk, on YouTube with Lex Fridman and Theo Von, and most recently on Ben Shapiro’s podcast — showcased his ability to adapt to new media forms.
The problem for our Elite is that it is adapted for the Age of Mass-Media where it set the rules. Sorry about that.