This article was first published on Tencent News All Media .
Why are the letters on the keyboard in QWERTY order? Why does computer programming always like “Hello, World”? Why are TV shows usually 45 minutes long? Why is the high-speed rail seat distribution ABCDF but not E… All the above problems can be explained by the “Path-Dependence” theory.
In a general sense, path dependence means that once you choose a certain path (whether “good” or “bad”), you may become dependent on this path, and then continue to move forward in a given direction. This theory was proposed by American economist Paul David in 1985, and later became famous because American economist Doglass North used this theory to explain the evolution law of economic system. [1]
In layman’s terms, “path dependence” can be understood as the power of traditional habitus, where past experience is applied to new situations, for better or for worse.
In the process of Internet development, there are also many phenomena of “path dependence” or “traditional habituation”, which are not even noticed by us. When we expand our horizons further vertically, these habits may come from the early days of the Internet, from the age of television or print, or even earlier in the history of communication.
Starting from the theory of path dependence, this paper hopes to discover and understand such phenomena in online life, and enter the vision of media evolution to explore how the past affects the present, and even continues to affect the future.
Path Dependence in Information Life
In 1868, an American publisher named Christopher Latham Sholes patented a model of the typewriter, and in 1874 it successfully brought the commercial typewriter to the market.
During these six years, the alphabetical order on the typewriter keyboard changed several times, from “ABCDE” to “QWE.TY” to “QWERTUIOPY”, and then adjusted the order of “Y”, and finally fixed it to “QWERTY”. [2]
This alphabetical order gradually became a habit of typists through the marketing of typewriters, and it has continued to this day, appearing on the computer keyboards we use, which can be regarded as a kind of “path dependence”.
At the same time, some critics believe that the layout of QWERTY is not in line with the usage habits, so the Dvorak keyboard, which was designed to improve typing efficiency, came out in 1936, but it still did not affect the dominance of the former.
Similarly, programmers learning computer programming always seem to start with “Hello, World”. This string was first mentioned by Bell Labs member Brian Kernighan in A Tutorial Introduction to the Language B in 1972.
Later, “Hello, World” was used as a case in The C Programming Language (1978). With the best-selling textbooks, “Hello, World” was also very popular and gradually became the “first lesson” of various programming languages. . [3]
In fact, in a sense, social media itself is not “new”. On the rock wall of the ancient city of Pompeii in the ancient Roman era, it was written “Whoever you want to write, you can write it”.
In the opinion of the media person Tom Standage, after the era of mass media such as newspapers, radio and television, social media is just restoring the tradition of “Writing On the Wall”, making the ancient social attributes of papyrus or coffee shop in the network. The world is resurrected again. [4]
In short, “path dependence” will make the initial incidents constantly self-reinforcing into a tough fact, but it will also innovate and make breakthroughs in itself due to changes in the environment of the times, which is especially obvious in the evolution of media.
In the printing era, “space at the beginning of the text” was used to save paper, while creating pauses between paragraphs to make it easier for people to read and understand.
Today, the presentation of text on web pages is “left and right”, and the typography of deliberately enlarged paragraph spacing or blank lines to indicate spacing (this is the case in this article) replaces the paragraph function of the first space.
Sentences are getting shorter, and pictures are getting bigger, and if you do the reverse in making books, you end up with more pages and a heavier book.
A 45-minute TV episode originated from a film reel that could only hold 15 minutes. Film films are also usually 90 minutes or 120 minutes long (multiples of 15).
Coincidentally, a song must be controlled within 5 minutes due to the capacity limitation of vinyl records. [5] However, with the popularity of digital recording media, time limits seem to be a thing of the past.
Although some music or film and television works still continue the past time, more and more content is challenging the audience’s tolerance limit.
A previous article discussed the resurgence of retro elements in the current content consumption environment. Compared with the strong continuity of “path dependence”, this retro trend seems to be just a short, point-like “look back” again and again, while the content The “path dependence” of presentation and content consumption is like a beacon that a ship adrift in the waves is looking for. No matter how the form changes, some details are always anchored.
How to understand path dependence in media evolution?
So, how should we understand these “path dependence” phenomena in the current media environment (or more specifically the network information dissemination environment)?
From an individual point of view, we choose those familiar ways of using media, either because of habit or because of convenience.
The abilities and habits acquired in childhood are often difficult to forget or change, and even last a lifetime. To understand “individual” from the perspective of media studies, we must think about the media environment in which we grow up.
Take the post-90s generation as an example, who were born in the 1990s and experienced the final glory of TV. This generation may be reluctant to accept Neil Postman-esque criticism and liken themselves to “couch potatoes,” but may often miss the warm scenes of television as a shared medium that brings families together.
The new generation in the 21st century was born in the “global village” created by the Internet. They are network aboriginals, and they are first-class “surfers” who will open their mobile phones to find cartoons and unlock iPads to play games since childhood.
It has also become commonplace for e-reading to overwhelm printed books, and online communications to replace on-site communication. They regard the Internet as a “normalized” way of life, and they are not willing to accept the “discipline” from the TV era.
In this way, Luddites (English Luddites, meaning those who hate novel inventions) smash machines in anger, maintaining not only the familiar way of working, but also the meaning of their own existence.
It is difficult for us to imagine the usage habits of the next generation of media, but looking back, the sliding up and down of short videos seems to have a potential connection with the habit of switching channels by pressing up and down buttons on the TV remote control.
The music app cuts songs left and right, and the physical buttons on the CD player also have continuity. Or change the angle of view, get used to touching the phone with your fingers, and inadvertently click on the computer or TV screen that does not support touch screen, which is also an inevitable thing at present.
At the social level, “path dependence” can be understood as the inheritance of past experience, the continuation of traditional habits, and the inheritance of collective memory.
A person has its own personal habits, and a society also has its traditional habits. The development of any media and the generation of media environment, in addition to individual participation and technological update, need to stand on the “shoulders of giants”.
As the examples mentioned above, these path-dependent phenomena in the Internet environment have their own histories, some dating back to the early days of the Internet, some from the age of television or print, or even more distant early in the history of communication.
In the Internet environment, social media seems to use new technologies to reproduce the “dream of communication” of the past: “Blogs are a new type of brochures, Weibo and social networking sites are a new type of coffee shop, and media sharing sites are a new type of note book.” [6]
Today’s popular podcasts inherit the culture of spoken language. Radio is a product of the era of mass communication, the announcer is behind the microphone, and podcasters give the microphone back to the common man. Radio is a megaphone-style shared medium, while podcasts are more private conversations.
Newsletter inherited the form of handwritten communication, which first appeared in Rome in the 1st century AD, and then spread widely in Europe. Today, Newsletter, which exists in the form of email subscriptions, can be regarded as a “clear stream” in the hustle and bustle of the Internet. All of the above can be seen as a return to history, or a continuation of tradition.
“Society needs the ‘past’, first of all, because society needs to use it to define itself.” [7] Path-dependent behavior seeks evidence from the past, which further strengthens its own rationality and, at the same time, further strengthens the media reality.
Conversely, whatever kind of media environment society wishes to create, it will choose which kind of “past” to discover and reconstruct. Media technology has both “path dependence” and breakthrough innovation. In the end, new media and old media are integrated and developed.
In the transformation of media technology, new media generate new content on the one hand, and disseminate old content in different ways, often resulting in a path-dependent phenomenon of “old wine in new bottles”. And the phenomenon of TV stations rebroadcasting old movies abounds.” [8]
Borrowing from Lewis Mumford’s “Technology and Civilization” who proposed the phenomenon of “pseudomorphism” in technological development [9], we will find that although new media are constantly refreshing our usage and living habits, old media still remain Trying to seize the right to speak, the new media has become a means of maintaining the order of the old media, and even must rely on the old media for development, which can also be regarded as path dependence.
However, the power of advanced technology on social development and change often breaks away from the inertia of social operation formed by path dependence. **New media technology will always emerge creatively in unexpected corners, bringing breakthroughs and innovations in the application of media technology.
At the same time, the development of media technology often breaks the monopoly situation. Printing has broken elite reading, improved the literacy rate of society, and brought mass reading. Social media has disrupted content production by professional agencies, giving everyone a “microphone.”
Reflection and Prospect of Path Dependence
The proposal of “path dependence” is often accompanied by its own criticism. Words such as walking the old way, following the old ways, losing activity, etc. are all sarcasm and negation of “path dependence” to varying degrees.
This is because when you are used to using traditional experience to solve practical problems, it is easy to generate inertia. On the one hand, it is not conducive to solving practical problems, and on the other hand, it will create new problems.
We often refer to the information cocoon or filter bubble, which is understood at the level of content information. But thinking from a generational perspective, filter bubbles can be understood as “generation gaps”.
Different generations often share different experiences and memories because of the different media environments they grow up in, resulting in different media habits, which in turn create their own “discourses”.
People in the print media environment may prefer serious reading, and online natives may be keen on short videos. People just continue their own media habits, but it will still cause differences between generations.
For example, the smile EMOJI in the chat box of young people has lost its original meaning, but an embarrassing and polite expression, which may not be understood by the elders.
But just like the Internet hot stalks ten years ago have been covered by the dust of history, it is also unknown how long the current habit will last.
Perhaps this will also become the “collective memory” of our generation, the “code” that we can understand each other in our social lives.
However, path dependence also has its own value, which needs to be cherished. When Wang Xinling’s “Love You” awakened the youthful memories of the post-80s and 90s, maybe one day in the future, “The Lonely Brave” will also inspire the collective resonance of the grown-up children.
Past experience, traditional habitus or collective memory can be understood as the retainer of society, helping members of society to have a sense of group belonging, and has an important function of establishing identity or social identity.
From the perspective of time and space, they will provide members of society with overall imagination and historical awareness, and have the function of sharing cultural significance and inheriting cultural traditions.
This goes beyond path dependence to how a society remembers itself.
[1] Zhang Zhuoyuan, etc.: “Dictionary of Political Economy”, Beijing: Economic Science Press, 1998.
[2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2200664-the-truth-about-the-qwerty-keyboard/
[3] https://www.thesoftwareguild.com/blog/the-history-of-hello-world/
[4][6][US] Tom Standage: A Brief History of Social Media: From Papyrus to the Internet, Beijing: CITIC Press, 2019.
[5] Chengdu Business Daily: “Why TV Dramas Every Episode 45 Minutes”, November 29, 2014, https://e.chengdu.cn/html/2014-11/29/content_499344.htm
[7] [De] Jan Assmann: “Cultural Memory”, translated by Jin Shoufu and Huang Xiaochen, Beijing: Peking University Press, 2015.
[8][America] Nicola Negroponte, “Digital Survival”, translated by Hu Yong and Fan Haiyan, Haikou: Hainan Publishing House, 1997.
[9] [America] Lewis Mumford: Technology and Civilization, translated by Chen Yunming, Wang Keren, and Li Huashan, Beijing: China Construction Industry Press, 2009.
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