Recently finished this book by Tom Standage, author of An Edible History of Humanity. I would not have picked this book up if I'd realized who it was by, because Standage's unsavory politics in AEHH left a bad taste in my mouth, and I was unimpressed by his derivative style. However, this book was (mostly) free of political rhetoric, and I really enjoyed the discussion of "really old" media. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the graffiti at Pompeii and the Roman letter abbreviations like SVBEEV (si vales, bene est, ego valeo = If you are well, that is good; I'm well.) I would like to find a book dealing just with this period of social media.
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Like you, I would be interested mainly in the early eras of graffiti. "si vales, bene est, ego valeo = If you are well, that is good; I'm well" seems to be the intellectual antecedent of Transactional Analysis (TA) - one famous book popularizing TA was "I'm OK - You're OK". I had an unprintable variant of this title that summarized TA, as practiced in New York City.
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