4 ms·
> Really? How did past revolutions and terrorist attacks get organized? You realize most of world history existed before the Internet, right? Yeah, of course.
by ardy42 6y ago
> Really? How did past revolutions and terrorist attacks get organized? You realize most of world history existed before the Internet, right?
Yeah, of course. Broadcasting means one-to-many communication. Before modern technology, those things were organized using other kinds of one-to-many communication, such as in-person meetings, rallies, and through newspapers and other kinds of publications.
Movements aren't organized one-to-one like on a telephone, because that's a far slower way of spreading a message. It's also an unreliable medium, as the children's game "telephone" shows.
- imgabe 6y agoPhone trees are a well known and used method to broadcast information via the phone system.
- ardy42 6y ago> Phone trees are a well known and used method to broadcast information via the phone system. And pretty bad at doing it. It's actually pretty funny to imagine someone trying to organize a movement via a phone tree.
- philwelch 6y agoIn my home town, we had a local group of mostly old folks, largely right-wing, who would have monthly luncheons with local politicians, and the group was literally called the Phone Tree because that’s how they organized. Although in this case the “Phone Tree” was a primitive robodialer owned by the head of the organization and used to disseminate recorded announcements of when the next luncheon was and who would be the guest/s.
- chasebro 6y agoSo not a phone tree…?
- philwelch 6y agoThe machine was literally called a "Phone Tree". Presumably because it was intended as an automated replacement for an old-fashioned phone tree. And, back to the root point, telephony can be used to organize political activity, at least in the form of getting all the old gun nuts in town to show up for a luncheon with their state legislator.