Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet

Main Ideas

• A magnificent panorama of human history in which the word—spoken, written, and printed—emerges not merely as a means of transmitting information, but as a mighty force shaping civilizations, raising empires, and overthrowing tyrannies.
• Bernstein skillfully reveals how the evolution of communication—from Sumerian tablets to the World Wide Web—determined the vectors of power, opened new horizons of freedom, and became an arena for the battle for minds and hearts.
• The book is imbued with the idea that access to information and the ability to disseminate it have always been the key to political and economic power, while control over the word has served as a tool for both enlightenment and oppression.
• The author explores how the invention of writing, the printing press, the telegraph, and the internet not only accelerated the pace of history, but also transformed the very fabric of society, dismantling old and creating new forms of power.
• Bernstein shows that the destinies of peoples and states were largely determined by who possessed the word, who could speak and be heard, and who was doomed to silence and oblivion.