Free speech and free access to information, all types of information, are the lifeblood of today’s society, without which we, as citizens of a democracy, upon whom ultimately rests decisions of state, cannot act in the best, most informed manner or make the best decisions. The freedom to show opinions and data, and the ability to access this information at our demand is crucial, and only through new technologies has information been able to become wide spread.

As long as there have been people upon this planet there has been a need to know more about the world, first simply what food can people eat, how do you kill this type of animal, how do you properly prepare a fruit that needs cooking before you can eat it? All this is information that, in one way or another, has been spread across many people and generations.

At first, the only way to learn a bit of information was to go to the person and ask, which most people could not do, because they didn’t know to ask about the bit of information, if they didn’t know about it already. Records of history were handed down verbally from historian to historian, altering slightly each time, much like how young children play the game ‘Telephone’.

Eventually writing, as a way of storing information, came into use, and civilization, as we know it, started. But even then, literacy was not the medium through most people’s knowledge of the world. Instead, they consulted, as they had in the past, those who knew. For events in the larger world, wandering minstrels or criers would spread the news from village to village and town to town, much as their ancestors had.

In fact, it was not until the mid 15^th century was there a way to quickly and in massive quantity create any source of written word. In 1455 Johan Gutenberg’s moveable type revolutionized forever the way information was distributed. Books could now be made much faster than previous means of copying, and with relative ease.

As a side note, it was William Caxton in the 1470s that, equipped with a moveable type press, started standardizing English from the hodgepodge it was previously to pretty much the same language I am speaking right now.

Once other inventors stole the basic idea, the basic moveable type was improved upon, altered, and improved up again for hundreds of years. Typewriters, and modern printing presses eventual came to the fore, with hundreds of magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, and books. Literacy, for the common person, now meant something, for it was the new way to collect information, to access information, whereas a steep price and low availability precluded the practical interest of the non-wealthy.

It is the availability of printing presses that we owe the existence of pamphlets and small books of John Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau, who’s combined philosophies American colonists based their objections to King George the Second, and the famous pamphlet by Thomas Paine, Common Sense, the first pamphlet to advocate American independence. Written solely for those who were not acquainted with tricky legal terms, it help forward the independence movement and support for the Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence.

And so, as the years passed, several new inventions also changed, forever, how humans exchange information, such as the radio, the telegraph and telephone, and the television, each a way of saying what needs or wanted to say, with such a diversity as to not slant people’s viewpoint in one direction.