By Cynthia
Haven
Two
scholars of the 17th and 18th centuries say the earlier era prefigured the
"information overload," with its own equivalents of Twitter, Facebook
and Google+. Social networks have been key to almost all revolutions – from
1789 to the Arab Spring.
If you
feel overwhelmed by social media, you're hardly the first. An avalanche of new
forms of communication similarly challenged Europeans of the 17th and 18th
centuries.
"In
the 17th century, conversation exploded," said Anaïs Saint-Jude, director
of Stanford's BiblioTech program. "It was an early modern version of
information overload."
Public
postal systems became the equivalent of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and
smartphones. Letters crisscrossed Paris by the thousands daily. Voltaire was
writing 10 to 15 letters a day. Dramatist Jean Racine complained that he
couldn't keep up with the aggressive letter writing. His inbox was full, so to
speak.
Stanford's
Mapping the Republic of Letters project, which forms part of the context for
Saint-Jude's remarks, shows that 40 percent of Voltaire's letters were sent to
correspondents relatively close by.
Not-so-profound
correspondence
What was
everyone saying? Not necessarily much. Rather like today's email. "It was
the equivalent of a phone call, inviting someone to tea or saying, 'OMG, did
you know about the Duke?'" said Dan Edelstein, an associate professor of
French and the principal investigator for the project. He will be teaching a
course in the spring called Social Animals, Social Revolutions and Social
Networks.
Clearly,
something had changed: Commercial postal services were on the rise. Though
their prototypes had existed down through the centuries, they had mostly served
government officials, and later (via the Medicis, for example) merchant and
banking houses. Suddenly they were carrying private correspondence.
More
people were writing, and more people could respond quickly, not only with
friends and family, but across far-flung distances with people they had never
met, and never would. Rather like some of our Facebook friends.
According
to Saint-Jude, it was an era, like ours, of "hyper-writing," even
addictive writing. The aristocratic Madame de Sévigné wrote 1,120 letters to
her married daughter in Brittany, beginning in the late 1670s, until her death
in 1696. It was important to keep her kid up to date with the goings-on in
Paris. Although she is remembered today for her witty epistles, she never
intended them to be saved, let alone published.
For a
time, the streets of Paris were littered with little bits of papers – les
billets – filled with a few words of scabrous and politically defamatory verse
that were thrown to the public. Sound like Twitter?
The
little bits of paper in your pocket could cause big trouble – Voltaire landed
in jail for his verse. Nonetheless, these short, anonymous postings bypassed
the government censor. It was also a way of organizing uprisings. Edelstein
points out that Egyptian social networks were critical to coordinating
demonstrators and drawing large crowds this year.
Indeed,
he noted that social networks are key to almost all revolutions. "The
Egyptian youth organizers may have excelled at mobilizing people at a moment's
notice, but interestingly it's another kind of social network that seems to be
taking advantage of the post-revolutionary situation – the Muslim
Brotherhood," he said.
"This
network may be less agile, but it has created longer and better sustained bonds
between members over time." Unlike Facebook networks that almost anyone
can join, the Brotherhood echoed the older, more exclusive networks that vetted
prospective members, such as France's Jacobin clubs. "Flash mobs quickly
splinter into cacophony," Edelstein told an assembly of incoming freshmen
last month.
Dangers
of misplaced letters
What is
public? What is private? More correspondence meant that letters could fall into
the wrong hands. Laclos' epistolary novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, showed the
dangers and disgrace that could befall the writers of wayward correspondence.
In our own era, need we mention the fate that befell the indiscreet Rep.
Anthony Weiner?
Meanwhile,
modern journalism was born, via a precursor of the blog. Nobles, such as
Cardinal Mazarin, hired their own "journalists" to report on scandal
and sex in the city. These writers set up bureaus around Paris to get the
juiciest news, and it was written and copied and distributed to subscribers.
Literary reviews and newspapers soon blossomed, along with letters to the
editor and a new environment of literary and cultural criticism.
The
poster was invented to invite more and more people to more and more public
events – theater, for example, became the dominant art form in the 17th
century. Posters mobilized these slow-motion "flash mobs."
The new
spaces we have created are virtual, not physical. But the physical spaces of
the 17th century and Enlightenment were just as much of a psychological
earthquake – l' Académie française, l'Académie des sciences, the celebrated
salons. That large groups of people were getting together to chat about
literature, discovery, ideas, revolution, or simply to watch a show, was a
change from the carefully manicured guest lists of the court, where the
principal order of business was big-time sucking up.
These
spaces evoked new questions: How does one conduct oneself? How does one appear
to others? Managing your public profile became vital. The result? A new
self-consciousness was born, and a new social nervousness. The players had the
same questions we have today, said Saint-Jude: "How do you curate all this
information?"
"Relax,"
said Saint-Jude. "You're in good company. There's nothing new under the
sun."
Source: news.stanford.edu
