Wide context

Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)

/^t/For a long, long time human beings were alone with the world. All their knowledge about things, different phenomena in the surrounding reality and other people was collected individually and on their own. Their judgements and views were also their own, based on what they had seen and experienced. They could have been verified later in various situations and prove right or wrong. The opportunity to get to know somebody else's opinion occurred very rarely and in particular conditions. Such a situation was very difficult but shaped intellectual independence and responsibility. This had lasted for ages, until the media were invented, which happened not long ago, at the very last minute, in fact. Homo sapiens appeared on the Earth in 200,000 BC, in 10,000 BC people started to cultivate the land, in 776 BC the first competitors entered the ancient Olympics, and thanks to Johann Gutenberg the first printing machine appeared in circa 1445 AD. Even if the printing technique were considered to be one of the media its influence on the history of the mankind has been relatively short. The history of the radio and television is much shorter but their importance can be compared to nothing. It is disputable whether the effect is positive or negative but nobody denies its power.