An Uncollected History of Feedback
A Tale of Violence, Innovation, and Self-Expression
The word ‘Feedback’ was coined in 1920 and didn’t take its more popular form until 1955. But people and processes have been creating feedback from the beginning, it was clearly not discovered or invented. It simply emerged.
Disclaimer: The following events are drawn from history. The dates are as exact as online research allows. The conclusions, connections, and humor are clearly biased. What follows is an attempt to provoke thought and laughter. Enjoy!
First Homo Sapiens -200,000 years ago
Homo Sapiens arrived on the scene some 200 millennia ago. Those early days predated both language and writing, but feedback would have already been present. One can easily imagine one caveman stealing the property of another. The resulting fist to the head, may have been the world’s first thumbs down.
Cave Art -10,000 years ago
About 10 millennia ago, early humans began to place art on the walls of their caves. As you can clearly see from the picture on the left, local critics quickly added their own ‘hands up’ and recorded feedback was invented.
Cuneiform -5,500 years ago
Early writing was invented in 3500 BCE. Cuneiform was an important step in the emergence of civilization. Cuneiform was added to clay tablets using a chisel, allowing merchants and others to record transactions and amounts. This first step towards written language was somewhat cumbersome and inefficient. It was however perfectly suited for adding feedback and thus TL,DR was born.
Constellations -3,300 years ago
Humans had been aware of the stars throughout their history. But it was the Mesopotamians who had the ingenious idea of collecting them into constellations. While some historians believe this was to make them easier to remember, product developers will notice that it elevated a one star product into a product that recieved five stars or more.
Roman Gladiators -2,300 years ago
In 264 BCE, the Roman Empire began to hold gladiatorial events. These events were one of the earliest and most well known examples of crowd-based feedback. Contrary to popular myth, it most likely did not include thumbs up or down. Also contrary to popular myth, the participants rarely lost their lives, much to the dismay of the ancestors of many twitter users.
The Dark Ages -1500 years ago
How better to describe 500 years of limited feedback? The age of feudal lords and holy decrees was punctuated by a whole lot of stating and very little listening. As it was, the peasants, slaves, and overworked craftsmen were too busy and unhappy to provide much positive feedback anyway. When it came time for bad reviews, the format of choice utilized torches and pitchforks.
Ecclesiastical Tribunal -800 years ago
After a little too much negative feedback, Pope Gregory had enough. Banning people from society, or as the church called it excommunicating, was just not working. In 1232, he established the Ecclesiastical Tribunal to put an end to bad reviews. Thus began the Inquisition. As expected, its success was quite limited. Some 250 years later it would reappear in Spain, a move no one expected. The experiment has been continued throughout the last five centuries, most recently in the form of Reddit.
Ben Franklin -300 years ago
America’s most beloved founding father was known for many things, but few realize he was one of the nation’s earliest and most successful trolls. Franklin used a myriad of pseudonyms to harass local writers, not least of which his brother James. Whether the 16 year old boy originally adopted the pseudonym of Silence Dogood merely to provide unsolicited feedback or for trips to the local chat room… the world may never know.
Revolution & Limited Government -200 years ago
Violent feedback reached its peak about 200 years ago with the French Revolution. The process of curbing this regrettable form of sharing had begun even before the Inquisition with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.
Unfortunately, charters and constitutions would take more than 800 years to become a global phenomenon. We are still waiting… but by the late 1700’s, Britain, The United States, and France had built new systems of government based largely on providing their people the opportunity to provide feedback.
While results have surely been mixed, often based on just how much feedback was going to be permitted, it surely beat the other major innovation in feedback that had also arrived in France… the guillotine.
Reality TV — nearly two decades ago
Just about two decades ago, reality television arrived on the scene. The experts will talk of the importance of Hollywood’s writer’s strike and the lasting impact of lower budget programming that does not require paid actors and celebrities.
But if you look at what the most successful running reality shows have in common, the answer is feedback. First in 1999, Survivor allowed us to see the impact of feedback on a game of strategy, popularity, and maybe some survival. Then it was not long before others followed, increasing the feedback to include the audience with shows like American Idol in 2002.
Social Media — the last decade
At the same time that the various Idol’s were bursting on the scene (Britian’s Pop Idol began in 2001), the dawn of Social Media began.
Note: Dawn is a great word for historic ‘starts’, nothing in history ever truly ‘started’ with the ‘first’ invention or discovery. The ‘first’ was just the one that most of civilization finally got around to noticing.
While BBS had been around since the 70’s, Friendster and MySpace arrived when the greater part of western culture was ready to embrace them. Only they didn’t have enough feedback! And so they were promptly sacked and replaced by Facebook and Twitter. Which did provide enough… at least for now.
Quintessentially is an article format created by Corsair’s Institute to increase the reader’s comprehension of key concepts in a quick and engaging fashion. For more articles from Feedback, Quintessentially — click here.
For more information on the author visit his profile on LinkedIN — George Earl
