During Tom Standage's keynote yesterday morning, I took notes on ping.fm that ended up in my twitter and facebook streams. Tom is from the Economist and has been a thought leader on social networks and contends the notion of the social network ranging from likes, favourites, forwards, attachments, and flame wars range back far beyond 200 years ago. For the last couple centuries, these kinds of networks have been suppressed by mass media. The Internet has revived these kinds of communication. He also posits that the idea of Open Source was invented several hundred years ago. Below is the video of the presentation. My tweet stream in forward chronological order is also included below that.

• Tom Standage - Digital Editor from the Economist is on stage. #drupalcon london
• Wow, the Economist has managed to kill Cold Fusion this past month. #drupalcon london CONGRATS!
• In the old days - before the rise of mass media, all media was social media. However, it was MORE social then. #drupalconkeynote
• Standage believes that "new media" is very similar to "old media". #drupalconkeynote
• The Romans had "laptops" and "tablets" and many of them looked like an iPad. They would be covered in black wax. #drupalconkeynote
• In the Roman era - it was sprawling - and it was centralized. Letters went back and forth. #drupalconkeynote
• Romans had semi public letters - they had attachments. News was flitting back and forth. #drupalconkeynote
• Books and speeches would have a couple of copies, then friends would make copies, that is how publishing occurred. #drupalconkeynote
• Speeches and books were going along the social networks, there was liking - recommending - forwarding, etc. #drupalconkeynote
• Scribes were like broadband made copies for you. Cicero's scribe invented shorthand - means higher bandwidth. #drupalconkeynote
• Cicero complains that he is getting too much information - for example, he didn't need to know gladiator results. #drupalconkeynote
• Roman Graffiti would show up inside peoples houses. You would be showing how literate your friends are. #drupalconkeynote
• Folks would comment on each other's "posts" on the walls in Roman home. #drupalconkeynote
• St Paul used social media. He used open letters known as Epistles. #drupalconkeynote
• These epistles had very much interest in churches that they weren't meant for. The epistles are still read today. #drupalconkeynote
• Leap Forward - the reformation - Martin Luther was a "blogger". #drupalconkeynote
• Martin Luther thought indulgences were outrageous. He wrote to the leadership - and his friends copied them and they spread in 2 weeks.
• Printers in other towns would ask about whether Luther's pamphlet was available to be copied. #drupalconkeynote
• There was a debate that ended up 21 additional posts. He responded to critics - he HAD to respond. #drupalconkeynote
• Quantcast didn't exist in 1500's but it turns out you can extrapolate his "traffic stats". Awesome slide at #drupalconkeynote
• Buying a pamphlet was a social badge in 1580. #drupalconkeynote
• Luther composed hymns in German so the regular person could participate in the service. #drupalconkeynote
• Is it right to dignify a criticism from the people? The church had a hard time figuring out what to do, because it wasn't "correct"
• Flame wars during the English Civil War. #drupalconkeynote
• Printers were killed for printing - so many folks moved to the Netherlands. #drupalconkeynote
• When the English went into civil war - the crown lost control of the printing press and people experienced free press. #drupalconkeynote
• The Bible was then changed to English - and folks had literacy increase. #drupalconkeynote
• Battles were written up in different versions, and those versions had refutes from opponents. Flame wars occurred. #drupalconkeynote
• A WAR of pamphlets. #drupalconkeynote
• There was a HuffPo model of creating pamphlets for free to gain influence. #drupalconkeynote
• Parliament tried to regain control of the press. Things were printed as speeches, even though they were never spoken. #drupalconkeynote
• This allowed for open conversations where folks could figure things out for themselves by looking at different ideas. #drupalconkeynote
• Scientists printed results of experiments, then they would build on each other's work - OPEN SOURCE MOVEMENT in the 1660's #drupalconkeynote
• Coffeehouse discussions were reprinted in magazines. The Coffeehouse Internet. #drupalconkeynote
• Open-ness and sharing made it easier to work on each other's work. #drupalconkeynote
• Now to America - America embraced the notion of the Freedom of the Press. #drupalconkeynote
• The government would tax paper and a stamp tax in America to make it hard for the poor to get information. #drupalconkeynote
• The stamp tax ultimately led to the American Revolution. #drupalconkeynote
• Paine had 1000 copies of a pamphlet printed (Common Sense). Washington got a copy. It ended up hitting 250,000 colonists. #drupalconkeynote
• The British lost because all the supplies needed to come by ship as they couldn't live off the land. #drupalconkeynote
• There have been many social media cultures over history sharing, liking, distributing etc. #drupalconkeynote
• The Sun caused things to fall apart. It was 6 times cheaper than other newspapers. It was a switch of funding by subscribers to ads.
• The Sun changed the model by increasing circulation - but it was no longer citizen journalists. Pro's decide what goes in. #drupalconkeynote
• All media became one way push - mass media put the control in a few sets of hands. #drupalconkeynote
• The mass media model has been upended by the Internet and reinvigorating horizontal media. A return to before 1833. #drupalconkeynote
• Governments are scared by the Internet as it topples them. Social media is going to continue making change in politics. #drupalconkeynote
• The Internet will stimulate more experimentation and social media will encourage innovation. #drupalconkeynote
• Internet could well encourage a new religion to "spread the world". #drupalconkeynote
• Media is becoming social again in the Internet Age - something dormant for 200 years. #drupalconkeynote