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The Internet! An entity that stands among the greatest inventions of human kind much as a colossus towers above the surrounding landscape. The internet has become one of the most integrated technologies that the human race has ever produced. It has seamlessly integrated into out daily lives and has become an integral part of our culture.

This leads to the question, what is the internet?

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The most simple breakdown of the internet is simply that the internet is the wider network that allows computer networks around the world run by companies, governments, universities and other organizations to talk to one another. The result is a mass of cables, computers, data centers, routers, servers, repeaters, satellites and WiFi towers that allows digital information to travel around the world. It is a global information super highway.

It is that infrastructure that lets you order the weekly shopping, share your life on social media sites like Facebook, stream Castlevania on Netflix, email your aunt in Tokyo and search the web for the world’s tiniest cat.

in terms of journalism the contemporary uses of internet have vast potential. As one of the fastest transmission medias, information is not only readily available, but quickly updated meaning information is never outdated or defunct. Additionally due to the nature of the internet information isn’t controlled or censored for the most part.

The anonymity of the internet allows for even the most radical ideas to be shared. Additionally the internet allows for interaction ensuring that those off like opinions can easily band together to push their ideals in the form of social activism. Social media sites such as Facebook truly facilitate this ability.

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Beyond this though the internet facilitates globalization. It breaks the barriers limiting and separating cultures. Geographical limitations no longer matter as information from or about a country is readily available. The communication barrier is also broken by translation programs available on the web such as BabelFish and Google Translate.

Commerce is another daily occurrence facilitated by the internet as well. From online stock trading to purchasing an item off of Amazon to cryptocurrency investments, the internet has aided in creating a true global market and economy that isn’t limited to physical items or investments.

With these positives though there are negatives. Harassment, cyber bullying and security breaches are common occurrences with the advent of internet technologies and the rise of social media, each with its own serious consequences such as social isolation and depression and even suicide or identity theft.

The internet has integrated itself into daily life. From communication to social media. From online gaming to business meetings. From shopping to education. the internet has facilitated a convenient means to accomplish almost every task from the comfort of our homes. It is a convenient purveyor of social interaction and human advancement. As such it is truly my belief that a world without the internet would be a world that the modern human would not comprehend let alone thrive in.

 

 

 

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Music has always been a powerful medium. The evocation of feelings, the transmission of a message through a beat, the painting of a picture, and rhythmic poetry. All of these encompass music in the modern day. From the cultural folk song, to the storytelling style of rap, the eclectic combined sound of drums and guitar of modern rock, the dissonant sonata that comprises electronica and the classical elegance of the Beethoven era, music is an intricate and integrated part of life.

The origin of music is extremely expansive thus this blog will focus specifically on what many people consider the advent of “modern” music, Tin Pan Alley and its history. Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music scene of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The name originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Flower District of Manhattan; a plaque on the sidewalk on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth commemorates it.

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Shortly after the Civil War, while America was beginning to rebuild and newly freed African Americans as well as immigrant Eastern European Jews were establishing themselves as citizens, there was an increased demand for sheet music. The demand fueled the growth of Tin Pan Alley which at the time not only used old pianos to compose their work, but also lead to the advent of the modern genres such as Jazz and R & B.

Tin Pan Alley extended its reach from just sheet music to film soundtracks, Broadway Musicals and music publishing. The influence of the powerhouse only grew as new media types like radio were introduced and adapted to.

Tin Pan Alley essentially paved the way for composers and song writers actually having the ability to earn revenue from their work. Tin Pan Alley successfully spearheaded copyright regulation and created the Music Publishers Association of the United States as well as the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.  This allowed for the songwriters and composers to receive royalties while still allowing the public to have access to their music. These implemented measures are still a major aspect of the contemporary music industry. Additionally, Tin Pan Alley helped to standardize the 32-bar chorus. And many of the songs accredited to Tin Pan Alley became industry standard or held elements that would become the industry standard. For example, listen to a song such as “Summertime” by George Gershin, then compare to some contemporary Jazz or even the ever-popular Christmas carols. The similarities are noticeable.

It is thus safe to say that without Tin Pan Alley’s judicious rise and the push to not only set the industry standard but the push to credit songwriters and composers, the world of music in the contemporary age would be a completely different landscape. And for any music aficionado or enthusiast the question of what could be different is one best left as a what if scenario.

Television! One of the most influential of the broadcast mediums. Its power has lasted for decades and has played an influential role in the expansion and development of what we call popular culture (pop culture). The process by which this medium has evolved to its modern-day standard was an intricate journey that shall be explored.

Television ‘began’ in 1926 John Logie Baird demonstrated television in London. In the form of televised silhouette images. However, as all inventions go there were significant technological inventions necessary to reach this point.

First, we begin with Paul Nipkow. In 1884 he introduced the concept of the Nipkow disk, which was a mechanical system that created a scanning effect when used with a beam of light. The disk had a spiral of holes bored into it. When the disk rotated, the holes would sweep over the whole image from top to bottom, slicing the image into 18 columns of information. Behind the disk were selenium photocells, which reacted to the light passing through the disk. The light from each of the 18 slices was converted to a varying electric signal in the photocell, and that signal was then transmitted to a distant receiver. At the receiver, incoming information was reassembled into a crude picture. The flow of electricity from the transmitter varied the brightness of a light bulb, the light of which was projected through another rotating Nipkow disk onto a screen. Although he was never able to build a working system, the Nipkow disc was later used by several TV pioneers as the basis for their own television systems.

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What was needed now was some device to turn an electric current back into light. A conventional light bulb was unsuitable because it could not vary its brightness fast enough to produce a TV image. The Neon lamp was developed by Georges Claude in France in 1902 and was used by many early television pioneers.

However, the most important breakthrough had happened earlier in 1897 when Karl Braun in Germany invented the cathode-ray tube. The ‘Braun tube’, although unusable for television at the time, would become the most important television display device for the next century.

The last invention in the chain came in 1906 when Lee de Forest in the USA invented the Amplion (amplifying triode valve), making it possible to amplify the weak video signals created by selenium photocells. A working amplifier took him another six years to develop, and nearly ten years would pass before this amplifier was improved enough for television.

The next form of television came in the form of an electronic system. The world’s first electronic television was created by a 21-year-old inventor named Philo Taylor Farnsworth. Starting in high school, he began to think of a system that could capture moving images, transform those images into code, then move those images along radio waves to different devices.

Farnsworth’s system captured moving images using a beam of electrons Essentially reminiscent to a basic camera. The first image ever transmitted by television was a simple line. Later, Farnsworth would famously transmit a dollar sign using his television after a prospective investor asked, “When are we going to see some dollars in this thing, Farnsworth?”

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Vladimir Zworkyin of Westinghouse was also credited with inventing an electronic television system in 1925. His device however never made it past the laboratory stage.

The next advancement was the implementation of color television. Color television was perfected by two different companies. These were CBS and RCA in 1946.The FCC authorized CBS’s color television technology as the national standard in October of 1950. However, the system at the time was bulky, picture quality was terrible and the technology was not compatible with earlier black-and-white sets.

CBS began color broadcasting on five east coast stations in June of 1951. However, RCA responded by suing to stop the public broadcasting of CBS-based systems. Making matters worse was that there were already 10.5 million black-and-white televisions (that had been sold to the public and very few color sets. Color television production was also halted during the Korean war. With the many challenges, the CBS system failed.

Those factors provided RCA with the time to design a better color television, which they based on Alfred Schroeder’s 1947 patent application for a technology called shadow mask CRT. Their system passed FCC approval in late 1953 and sales of RCA color televisions began in 1954.

By 1979, even the last of these had converted to color and by the early 1980s, black-and-white sets were mostly small portable sets or those used as video monitor screens in lower-cost consumer equipment. By the late 1980s, even these areas switched to color sets.

Thus the tale of modern television begins. To this day the evolution of television has continued. From flatscreen televisions to 3d programming television had become extremely integrated in our daily life.

The history of film reaches as far back as ancient Greece’s theatre and dance, which had many of the same elements in today’s film world. But technological advances in film have occurred rapidly over the past 100 years. Starting in the Victorian era, many camera devices, projectors and film sizes have been developed and mastered, creating the film industry we know today.

Modern film though begins with the concepts of photography and motion pictures. Now one may ask what exactly motion pictures are. Motion pictures are a series of still pictures rapidly projected on a screen in such a way that the viewer perceives a smooth motion.

One of photography’s first concepts that started the development of motion picture was that of Visual Persistence. A concept developed by Dr. Peter Mark Roget in 1824. The basis of this concept was that the brain will persist in seeing a visual object for a fraction of a second after the image itself has disappeared or changed. If multiple images are presented one after another the visual persistence of the first image fills the time so they seem continuous.

Photography’s next step started with French artist and inventor Louis Daguerre and chemist Joseph Niepce who created the best method of photography for the time. In 1839 Louis Daguerre developed the Daguerreotype. This process involved a silver coated copper plate that is exposed to iodine fumes or a chemical bath in a dark room, which creates a film coating. This plate is then placed inside the camera. When briefly exposed to light or a strongly lit song the image is burnt onto the plate. A further chemical bath affixed the image to the plate. By the 1880’s a flexible celluloid film and a simple box camera were developed and marketed by George Eastmond.

The next step for moving images was the Phenakistoscope. Developed by by two different inventors; Joseph Plateau, a physicist in Brussels who developed the Phenakistoscope and by Simon von Stampfer, a mathematician in Berlin who developed a near-identical device that he named the Stroboscope. The device proved popular and was soon mass-produced and marketed under some more easily-pronounceable names, including Phantasmascope, Fantoscope, and even the prosaic “Magic Wheel”. The device was operated by spinning the cardboard disc and viewing the reflection of the image in a mirror through a series of moving slits. Through the distortion and flicker, the disc created the illusion that the image was moving. Women danced, men bowed, and animals leapt in short, repeating animations.

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The Vitascope was an early film-projector first demonstrated in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. The pair publicly demonstrated an image projection device at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia which they called the “Phantoscope.” This prototype of modern film-projectors cast images onto a wall or screen for a moderately large audience. The inventors, heady with the scent of success, became at odds with one another and began fighting over credit for the invention. Thomas Armat independently sold the Phantoscope to The Kinetoscope Company. The company realized that their Kinetoscope would soon be a thing of the past with the rapidly advancing proliferation of early cinematic engineering. They were very interested in this newest magic lantern and approached Thomas Edison to finance the manufacture of the instrument. Edison agreed to the deal on one condition: he would henceforth be credited with the invention of the machine that he renamed the “Vitascope”.

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Audio in films was a slow development. It began with an invention by Edison known as the phonograph. The phonograph was developed because of Thomas Edison’s work on two other inventions, the telegraph and the telephone. In 1877, Edison was working on a machine that would transcribe telegraphic messages through indentations on paper tape, which could later be sent over the telegraph repeatedly. This development led Edison to speculate that a telephone message could also be recorded in a similar fashion. He experimented with a diaphragm which had an embossing point and was held against rapidly-moving paraffin paper. The speaking vibrations made indentations in the paper. Edison later changed the paper to a metal cylinder with tin foil wrapped around it. The machine had two diaphragm-and-needle units, one for recording, and one for playback. When one would speak into a mouthpiece, the sound vibrations would be indented onto the cylinder by the recording needle in a vertical (or hill and dale) groove pattern.

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The next step was devising a means to showcase these films to the masses. It was at this stage the Kinetoscope by Thomas Edison was invented. The Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device. The operation involved placing in a penny, looking through the peep hole, and turning a crank to view. By 1896, Edison was projecting motion pictures to the public for the first time in America.

  photo credit: https://www.wired.com/2014/05/kinetoscope/

The nickelodeon was the first type of indoor exhibition space dedicated to showing projected motion pictures. Usually set up in converted storefronts, these small, simple theaters charged five cents for admission and flourished from about 1905 to 1915. “Nickelodeon” was concocted from nickel the name of the U.S. five-cent coin, and the ancient Greek word odeion, a roofed-over theater, the latter indirectly by way of the Odéon in Paris, emblematic of a very large and luxurious theater, much as Ritz was of a grand hotel.

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Film has truly evolved. Techniques, film styles and even the theatres have advanced to meet the demand of the generations and continues to be a dominant and intriguing subject.

Broadcast media is an important tool for the budding journalist; one of the most powerful and infamous being the radio. From sports reports, to news, to even the infamous Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” broadcast, the radio has been a dominant force for idea sharing, advertising and information dissemination that the history of such a device is important to all journalists.

The journey through the history of radio begins with the inventor Sam Morse who invented the legendary Morse Code; he created a device and devised a code, specifically a telegraph machine and a code for each letter that consisted of long and short pulses of electricity.  The telegraph machine was essentially a pencil attached to a piece of paper, that had an electromagnet attached, that would leave a record of the electrical pulses received as dots and dashes on a piece of paper. These could then be decoded to reveal a message. After receiving a grant from the United States government, Morse strung copper wire on poles between Baltimore, Maryland and Washington; a distance of over 40 miles. From Baltimore he sent his first message which read “What hath God wrought”. This was the start of various applications for Morse code including military grade applications to the present day and was the first step in the development of modern day radio.

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The second step of the journey involves the Scottish physicist James Maxwell Clarke (1870’s) and German physicist Heinrich Hertz on their work to predict and prove the existence of radio waves; a type of electromagnetic radiation, that are mainly used for communication. Television, cellphones and radios all receive radio waves and convert them to mechanical vibrations in the speaker to create sound waves that can be heard. Hertz using the theory proposed by Clarke not only proved their existence but also created the first transmitter and receiver for radio waves in 1887.

Following the success of Hertz, Gugliemo Marconi created the wireless telegraph in 1895. Through his experiments Marconi went on to create the first system to effectively utilize radio communication. Marconi went on to be the founder of the Marconi Telegraph Company in 1899. In 1901, he then went on to successfully send wireless signals across the Atlantic Ocean thus disproving the theory that the earth’s curvature would disrupt the transmission of radio signals.

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Reginald Fessender was the next great inventor in radio’s history. He visualized and created the radio telephone in 1906. His first successful test occurred on Christmas eve. Radio operators along the Atlantic sea heard a transmission of a voice reading from the Bible and the sound of a violin playing. Audible transmissions such as these were the successor of Morse code.

The American Inventor Lee De Forest was described as the self-titled father of radio. In 1906 he filed his first patent for the vacuum tube he called the Audion; describing it as a detector of sound. By 1907 he had invented an arc-based radiotelephone transmitter and Audion receiver, and he was writing about the possibility of sending music into homes by wireless. The development of the Audion eventually aided the development of small sized receivers, which were extremely important in the 1^st World War.

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By the early 1920s radio was imbibed by the masses. In 1919 David Smirnoff; a manager of the Radio Corporation of America, proposed to the American Marconi Company to broadcast music, sports scores, lectures, weather reports and concerts.

Radio Programming was then properly established by Dr. Frank Conrad; who was developing transmitting systems for Westinghouse Corporation. He built a transmitter over his garage and broadcasted two evenings a week. It was an extremely popular concept to the point that people sent him postcards requesting him to play Victrola records.

The first Commercial Radio Station KDKA was in 1920. It broadcasted the Harding Cox presidential election. An account of the election returns was phoned in from a newspaper office and read over the air. In-between these announcements Banjo music was played.

Additionally, two radio acts were implemented to improve the legislation regulating these frequencies, one in 1912 and the other in 1927. The first was prompted by the investigation of the sinking of the Titanic and mandated that all radio stations in the US be licensed by the federal government. Additionally, it mandated that all seagoing vessels must continuously monitor for distress signals.

The second act established the Federal Radio Commission, and mandated that government regulated the airwaves in the “interest of the people” and that broadcasting would only be done on assigned, frequencies, power levels and times. This particular act was eventually replaced by the Federal Commissions Act of 1934

In 1933 Edwin Armstrong enabled what is essentially modern radio. He developed and patented a new radio signal “Frequency Modulation”. It carried both higher and lower frequency ranges than amplified modulation (AM) and was an ideal carrier for music. Additionally, these frequencies were static free. Edwin Armstrong like Fessender had his invention stolen by a large company. RCA re-used the system for TV broadcast which lead to a prolonged court battle. Armstrong committed suicide before the settlement of the case.

Modern radio has become a true testament to information sharing and entertainment and has taken evolved forms such as podcasts. It has truly stayed the course as a prevalent and dominant form of media and is one that has become truly integrated in to daily life.

The advent of the printing press gave rise to one of the most influential media platforms created by humanity. The newspaper can be considered to be one of the most vital and powerful means of expression of the news and views of men and circumstances. With the growth of literacy, and the development of the means of communication, they have played an important and vast role in modern society. The newspaper has allowed us to disseminate information, educate the public on regional and international issues, allow for the grievances of the public to be aired and form the public opinion.

While the act of news sharing has origins dating back to ancient Rome and the acta diurna; which were reportedly published by prior to 59 BC (as early as 131 BC), the true revolution of the news medium was brought about by Johannes Gutenberg and his movable type printing press which was named the Gutenberg Press.

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Developed in the 1400’s, the Gutenberg press was considered the first true printing press with movable parts, and each letter being cast in molten iron; despite the Koreans crudely casting individual letters in metal more than a century before Gutenberg press. The first successful test of this press came in the form of 200 printed bibles called Gutenberg’s bible.

The first weekly newspaper was published in Germany by Johann Carolus in 1604. Called Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, the publication satisfied the tenets Edwin Emery suggested of a “true” newspaper:

Accessibility by the public

Published at a regular interval (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.

Information is current

Covers a variety of topics (politics, events, entertainment, sports, etc.

Despite meeting the requirements for a newspaper, there is some debate as to whether The Relation qualifies as the world’s first newspaper. It is interesting to note however that  the World Association of Newspapers considers The Relation the first true newspaper.

The first English newspaper was published in 1665 in Oxford, England. Known as the Oxford Gazette the particular publication was under the authority of King Charles II and was published twice weekly with it’s content controlled and screened by the crown, the newspaper moved to London in 1666 and was renamed the London Gazette.

Like its European counterparts, the Americas also had their own form of newspaper. The first true American newspaper wasn’t introduced until 1690, when Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick was published in Boston. The publisher, Benjamin Harris, was arrested for including political criticisms and his newspaper was suppressed – all known copies were destroyed.

In 1704, postmaster John Campbell published the Boston News-Letter, and it became the first successful newspaper in America, due to its ties to the post office the paper was mailed without postal charges. Unlike Harris, Campbell did not engage in political discussion to avoid upsetting colonial authority. This publication instead was said to have featured European politics, shipping reports, and advertising instead. However the paper had little financial success due to a lack of interest in its content.

The New England Courant was the first newspaper to introduce the concept of the press being a watchdog in the interest of the public. Published by James Franklin in 1721, the paper departed from tradition as it was not published by authority and had no connection to the post office. As a consequence though is has been stated that James Franklin, who was jailed after criticizing the colonial government for failing to protect citizens from pirates in the New England Courant in 1722.

At first, newspapers were only available to wealthy Americans, those who were literate and could afford to pay for subscriptions in advance. The subscriptions typically cost what a general laborer would make in an entire week of work, so most could not afford them. That all changed in the 1830s, when advances in printing and papermaking made it possible to sell newspapers for one cent per copy. Increased literacy as well as technological advancements such as the telegraph – which made it possible to quickly share news over great distances – and the rotary press contributed to newspaper growth. The “Penny Press” made newspapers affordable to the entire public and spurred an explosion of newspaper publishing across the United States.

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What is written communication?

 

This particular form of writing was eventually replaced by the Phoenician script.

The Phoenician alphabet developed from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, during the 15th century BC. Before then the Phoenicians wrote with a cuneiform script. The earliest known inscriptions in the Phoenician alphabet come from Byblos and date back to 1000 BC.

The Phoenician alphabet was perhaps the first alphabetic script to be widely-used – the Phoenicians traded around the Mediterranean and beyond, and set up cities and colonies in parts of southern Europe and North Africa – and the origins of most alphabetic writing systems can be traced back to the Phoenician alphabet, including Greek, Etruscan, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew, as well as the scripts of India and East Asia.

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Egyptian Hieroglyphs

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The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was one of the writing systems used by ancient Egyptians to represent their language.They were referred to as ‘holy writing’. Thus, the word hieroglyph comes from the Greek hiero ‘holy’ and glypho ‘writing’. In the ancient Egyptian language, hieroglyphs were called medu netjer, ‘the gods’ words’ as it was believed that writing was an invention of the gods.

Like most ancient scripts, the origin of Egyptian hieroglyphs is poorly understood. There are, however, several hypotheses that have been put forth. One of the most convincing views claims that they derive from rock pictures produced by prehistoric hunting communities living in the desert west of the Nile, who were apparently familiar with the concept of communicating by means of visual imagery.

Papyrus, the chief portable writing medium in Egypt, appears during the First dynasty (c. 3000-2890 BCE): the earliest surviving example we know of comes from a blank roll found in the Tomb of Hemaka, an official of King Den. Egyptian scribes used papyrus and other alternative writing surfaces, including writing boards generally made of wood.

Oral Communication

What exactly is communication? What is oral communication?

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According to American psychologist Rollo May “Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing”. Communication is a Latin word which means ‘to share’. It is the sharing of information between different individuals. It includes the sharing of ideas, concepts, imaginations, behaviours and written content. Communication is simply defined as the transfer of information from one place to another. This transfer of information can be conducted in different ways including oral means.

Oral communication refers to the conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be listened to or spoken, and can be broken down into two categories; verbal and non-verbal.

Non-verbal communication comprises of grunts and noises and no actual words. It is the conveyance of ideas through means that can be listened to or spoken using no words. This form of communication was considered to be the first form of communication early human beings had. Due to biological constraints; that is a voice box similar in development to apes and chimpanzees, early humans primarily used this method, which consisted of para-language. That is to say they communicated via grunt and other vocalizations as well as body movements and gestures.

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On the other hand there is verbal communication, which is the conveyance of ideas through actual enunciated and spoken words. The earliest human to demonstrate the ability to generate more complex sounds and eventually became able to speak and develop languages were the Cro-Magnus. They had the same biological structure as the modern day human.

Why do we talk? Grooming, gossip and the origins of verbal communication

What is so special about human communication? We are prodigious communicators and communicate on an endless array of topics and subjects: about ourselves, our feelings, our desires and expectations; about others, their emotions, their moral qualities. We communicate about the present, the past and the future of our actions and other people’s actions. We talk about gossip, what other should or should not do, what we are told about how things are, about rituals, traditions. We tell truths and lies in order to get attention from others, or sometimes just bullshits, for example, to “sex up” a story and make us feeling more important. The range of topics on which we communicate is a peculiarity of our species. Animals can have sophisticated systems of communication, such as vocalizations in birds, or alarm calls in vervet monkeys [Seyfart and Cheney, 1986], but the intentions that trigger the communicative signals among animals are very limited: directions, alarm, courtship, and few others. Humans can communicate about everything: about existing and non-existing states of affairs, about what they wish and what they won’t, and the intentions they have to communicate is somehow difficult to specify: they seem to be a talkative species that invests a lot of energy in communication for the sake of it, without any second end. Robin Dunbar advanced the hypothesis in 1997 that talk among humans could be an instrument of social cohesion and social order. Dunbar reported data on the fact that most conversations among humans around the world are centered on gossip and not on communicating each other vital factual information. This enormous waste of energies in gossiping about others must have an adaptive function that is different from that of acquiring information. According to Dunbar, talk and gossip have the function of keeping track of and strengthening social relations as the intense activity of grooming among certain primates is devoted to.

 

 

To begin the first question that must be asked is what is history?

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The easiest answer to that would be the documented accounts of past events. However if such is the case the pertinent questions to be asked would include: are records of these events accurate? Is there any significant bias in the records? Are there any missing or altered details compared to other documented accounts?

In relation to Journalism, it could be argued that suppression of the truth of accounts of events such as for example who actually created the printing press could be possible. This could be due to the actual invention being created by someone who is part of what is referred to in modern society as a minority. Additionally as we’ve seen many times throughout historical records information is the key to control. Suppression of information is a way to appease and control the masses which could explain the suppression of the first recorded newspaper in addition to the historical account of said newspaper being unsanctioned to make use of another example.

Power and resources are also factors that may influence the truth. Those with political power can easily influence what information is documented or published to the masses for the sake of their own agenda as is the case in China where information is censored and reflects the opinions of the ruling political party for example.

History can be argued to be subjective thus individual perception plays a key role in its interpretation. Perception however can be subject to personal bias which can easily influence and impact the records of events. Thus it is imperative to take accounts with a grain of salt.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton