... who received it from ... who received it from ... who

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Lineage used to be important. Knowing who it was who originally made a particular statement helped give it credence, was an important factor in determining its validity.

Moses received Torah from Sinai and passed it on to Joshua; and Joshua to the elders and on down. Even in cases where a new, even radically new, interpretation was being propounded, the person doing so attempted to show that he was still part of the chain of transmission, of dissemination. This ability to anchor something new in that ongoing chain was a means of legitimizing it. Today, when originality (whatever that is) is prized more than sticking to the sources, showing oneself as part of this chain is no longer a value.

That chain of transmission, secularized, perhaps even trivialized, is still maintained on refrigerator doors. We remember when and from whom we received each snippet of wisdom that comes our way, and when we remark to someone that we like something we've read on their refrigerator door they'll tell us "oh, I got that from ...". But although in cyberspace we receive each forward with a seemingly never-ending list of other forwards (which often take up more space than the message itself), this chain of transmission is lip-service at best. With the vast amounts of material going through our inboxes nobody really stops to reflect on who is passing something on to whom. We end up with something more tanakhic: no before or after in cyberspace.

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Go to: Are there refrigerator doors in cyberspace?