Conversation

How do you think the power ratio of pen:sword has changed in the last 500 years at the individual level? Words: scribes to Gutenberg all the way to social media Sword: from literal swords to crappy muskets to reliable automatic weapons I'd say words have been relative gainer
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Only because weapons (nukes, carpet bombing, chemical warfare) have become so powerful they have been constrained by geopolitics. Words have been constrained as well — Rwandan genocide incitement radio is an outlier not the norm.
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That’s why I tried to limit comparison to individual weapons and words (small arms and individual media leverage). There are also ‘nukes’ on the words side I guess, at the level of court judgments or legislation for eg.