What was happening in 325 AD?
Constantine had just conquered the five kingdoms in the Roman empire. He had done it with the help of the Christians. Particularly the Christian soldiers with in the Roman Centruian legion. A vision is attributed to Constantine where the night before the last battle, he had a vision of Christianity. So converted to Christ.
With the stroke of a pen, it was no longer legal to throw Christians to the lions… just because they were Christians. Constantine has a problem though. After 300 years the Christian religeon wasn’t consolidated into one religeon. Much of the information about the religeon was handed down by word of mouth. 20 years afterwards nobody could remember what the first missionary had said. So most people were following a mixture of Christianity and the orginal Pagan religeons they came from. This created a lot of confusion. Plus a lot of splinter groups.
The meeting in Nicea between all the leaders of the individual religeons met to consolidate thier beliefs. Constantine orchestrated the meeting. Out of this meeting came the vision of the Catholic church and with it, the documentation for that vision… The bible. With the bible missionaries could spread the gospel and know that everyone would remember what was being said.
With the vision on paper, the church grew at a staggering rate.
One thing the church leaders noticed was that other religeons also had thier own beliefs written down. These religeons would fight thier Christian counter parts with thier own religeous writings. The oldest religeons have some of the oldest documents based on the writings of the original founders.
To counter these ideas, the church would declare such writings as sacriligeous and have them burned. Without the vision, the details would be forgotten in less than a generation. It was a waiting game with the religeous followers lining up behind the religeon with the best documentation.
To day we see these information wars still. Turn on the TV and advertisers try to imprint our minds with the messages that will encourage us to buy. Almost attempting to burn thier competitors images from out minds.
The lesson is that the information we remember wins. By sharing information within the organization and outside the organization to customers, the best Information distribution system wins. Information Technology (IT) is the digital tool modern information experts utilize to win the information war.