One of the things to remember is that a number of the countries involved in the Arab Spring previously had functioning democracies that were toppled, which strikes me less about struggling across a valley and more about climbing back up a mountain.
The reason of course that feudalism was so popular was that it made territory more easy to govern if you couldn't get people and information quickly from place to place and therefore had a difficult time extending your control, you could give most of that control over to a local landlord in exchange for protection, i.e. being able to send other nobles to your defense, so that monarchy in feudal Europe functioned more as a mutual defense treaty with the king as arbiter, which is why as government is more and more centralized, it improves communication more and more, for example Roman roads and Kublai Khan's mail system. Which is why the military is so good at developing communications devices that we civilians then co-opt. What drives me nuts is that some fantasy authors ignore communications. The story never mentions something like a sorceress can use a magic mirror to send messages, supposedly horse messengers do it, but the never seem to have a problem with lost of garbled ones.
Of course some authors make use of screwed up message systems...
Actually, I'm pretty sure the internet already is changing things. It makes it much harder for governments to control the flow of information, and has probably contributed to the increasing scorn for experts. If anybody can be heard, than anybody can be heard, in other words.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-09-03 10:31 pm (UTC)The reason of course that feudalism was so popular was that it made territory more easy to govern if you couldn't get people and information quickly from place to place and therefore had a difficult time extending your control, you could give most of that control over to a local landlord in exchange for protection, i.e. being able to send other nobles to your defense, so that monarchy in feudal Europe functioned more as a mutual defense treaty with the king as arbiter, which is why as government is more and more centralized, it improves communication more and more, for example Roman roads and Kublai Khan's mail system. Which is why the military is so good at developing communications devices that we civilians then co-opt. What drives me nuts is that some fantasy authors ignore communications. The story never mentions something like a sorceress can use a magic mirror to send messages, supposedly horse messengers do it, but the never seem to have a problem with lost of garbled ones.
Of course some authors make use of screwed up message systems...
Actually, I'm pretty sure the internet already is changing things. It makes it much harder for governments to control the flow of information, and has probably contributed to the increasing scorn for experts. If anybody can be heard, than anybody can be heard, in other words.