The Cheapness of Words

Words are getting cheaper. The net cost for an 18th Century politician to get his (pols were always male back then) words to the electorate was astonishing. It would have meant riding a horse or carriage to every hamlet within riding distance of a constituent and making a speech. Or, it would have meant sending proxies out to read a speech on the politician’s behalf. Radio and then television and direct mail drastically reduced this cost, but the “spray and pray” method led to many words falling on inattentive ears. Either way, words were carefully chosen and parsimony was at a premium (see Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address for an example).

As we are seeing so dramatically in Washington words now are cheap, essentially at no cost other than the time it takes to thumb-in a 140-word Tweet. This creates a dilemma: on the one hand words are cheaper and easier, so more of them can flow forth on any given day. But, on the other hand, this lessens the economic importance of choosing words carefully, and so leads to a certain profligacy of digital speech. Combine verbal profligacy with a “commentator culture” (see this Herman Trend Alert), and we have an ever-tightening cycle of Tweet, re-Tweet, comment, response, ad nauseaum. At some point, it becomes almost impossible to easily separate the real from fake news, or the message from the commentary.