As citizens rely on information to make political choices, media are an important element in the process of public opinion formation. They decide which topics and issues are on the agenda or not; which individuals or societal groups are given broadcasting time or publishing space and which aspects and facts are presented or suppressed. Media therefore have the ability to influence public opinion and those controlling the media are to a certain extent capable of altering the nature of discourse in their desired direction.
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Writing and calculating came into being at about the same time. The first pictographs carved into clay tablets are used for administrative purposes. As an instrument for the administrative bodies of early empires, who began to rely on the collection, storage, processing and transmission of data, the skill of writing was restricted to a few. Being more or less separated tasks, writing and calculating converge in today's computers.
Letters are invented so that we might be able to converse even with the absent, says Saint Augustine. The invention of writing made it possible to transmit and store information. No longer the ear predominates; face-to-face communication becomes more and more obsolete for administration and bureaucracy. Standardization and centralization become the constituents of high culture and vast empires as Sumer and China.