When publishing changes, so does society. Investigate and compare the impact of two publication technologies, one pre-1900 and one post-2000, on a specific aspect of society (e.g. education, politics, creative industries, science, entertainment, social relationships).
Power in society does not necessarily reside with those who rule, but rather with those who are best able to effectively lead and communicate their ideas and beliefs and by doing so influence others. Once those ideas are accepted into the public sphere, societal reformation can be brought about; these ideas are usually accepted when they highlight problems within the society and reflect grassroots issues and possible solutions. For those in the broader society to be able to communicate their ideas there needs to be an easy, cost effective means of publication that allows anyone to broadcast their opinions. Often it is those in the creative industries, highly recognizable thought leaders, which wield the most power over the masses.
Both the printing press and the internet’s platform of blogging has introduced paradigm shifts into society; both means of publishing were initially overlooked by those in control but seized by others as a means of communicating ideas. Blogs can be considered a natural progression of the printing press as both modes of publication operated outside, and often against, the traditional media; both publishing platforms also experienced similar copyright and censorship controls. They allowed for individuals to enter into creative industries that were previously dominated by the governing powers and were able to reach a much wider audience.
The major social influence on the population of Europe in the 15th century for the development and spread of ideas was the Catholic Church; the introduction of the printing press not only undermined this authority but also broadened the scope of available knowledge and democratized society (Kertcher & Margalit, 2005). Before the printing press, the church experienced an uncontested, constructed form of legitimacy; it helped rule the empire through the structure of a “two sword rule” (Kertcher & Margalit, 2005), which was made up of feudalistic powers of the king and spiritual powers of the pope. As Samuel Finer (1997) said, “the church was not only a state, it was the state: it was not only a society, it was society”.
This level of power allowed the church a hegemony over public opinion, they needed to do very little to maintain this control as there were few alternative means of spreading ideas to a wider audience. Pre-printing press, the church dominated from the pulpit and the written word. As most people could not read, the church held a special place of importance in the community and in the determination of what manuscripts would be published and when. Monks manually duplicated manuscripts, allowing for the number of titles and their subjects to remain fairly limited, as copying a manuscript was a slow process. Similarly, libraries were located inside monasteries and very few non-ecclesiastics had access to books (Kertcher & Margalit, 2005). Due to the tight control of published works and low literacy rates amongst the general population, the church was able to easily ban any books they considered heretical and control the content of those they considered acceptable. This concept and practical application of power spread from the ecclesiastical and political elements of the state through the framework of creative industries that the church patronised. Religious imagery dominated the architecture and artwork of this and the immediate subsequent eras. Fundamental to this process and the power of the church was the central theme of creation. A tenet promoted and defended through the church’s writings, which in turn, for most of the population of Europe, formed a basis of understanding of how the world worked.
Gutenberg’s invention of his printing press in 1440 allowed the production of books to spread “like wild fire in Western Europe” (Eliav-Feldon, 2000). The introduction of moveable type increased the number of books and the speed by which they could be produced; the process was inexpensive in comparison to the pre-Gutenberg methods of handwritten duplication and made information more accessible to individuals. Many business entrepreneurs recognised the benefits of this new medium, which contributed to the rapid spread of the book (Anderson, 1994). The supremacy of the Catholic Church began to be actively challenged as the printing press caused the traditional socio-political structure of society to transform; anyone who could access a printing press could now access the public opinion. While the printing press cannot be solely credited with the decline of the church, it did erode its authority by “assisting to spread new ideas and competing myths” (Kertcher & Margalit, 2005).
This is demonstrated through the writings of John Huss and his follower, Martin Luther. Both men made similar accusations and claims about the church however the differing successes of the two men lied within their means of publication; Huss relied on handwritten books that were easily controlled by the church and Luther uterlised the printing press to spread his Protestant doctrine (Kertcher & Margalit, 2005).
Huss was burnt by the church for being a heretic while Luther’s pamphlets were mass-produced and sold in the thousands to the general public. Scholars have recognised the essential role the printing press played in shifting the creative authority previously held by the church, into Luther’s hands. Luther himself “claimed the invention of printing was a gift from God to reform His church.” (Kingdon, 1980)
The so-called Information Age of blogging has seen a move away from the modern socio political structure base of manufacturing and into the digital realms. The Internet is a distributed and open systems technology that was originally designed during the cold war period as a means of communication for “the surviving elite of a military-industrial complex” which has since mutated into a “subversive neo-democratic cyberculture” (Strangelove & Bosley, 1994). This cyberculture does not rest in the hands of the elite, but rather anyone with access to a computer. While the Gutenberg press made mass media communication available to the few people who could own or access the device, the Internet has turned every owner of a computer with Internet connection into a publisher and broadcaster (Strangelove & Bosley, 1994).
Often referred to as the second Gutenberg revolution, blogging is the new economy of information (Strangelove & Bosley, 1994). Previously manufacturer-based capitalism placed means of production and the means of distribution firmly in the hands of the elite. These elite also ensured that many resources, such as the commercial mass media, were removed from the public sphere and placed under the control of private industries. Media giants have long since reined in the ideals of the Gutenberg press, primarily the notion of the distribution of power to the general population and, if anything, have recentralized control of commercial mass media to a few multinational media organisations/owners. They are the new church of the 21st century. However through the introduction of blogs, the unvoiced masses are once again being heard and this has given rise to the notion of the intellect individual. The intellect individual is one who is able to operate within the economy of information, an economy that has moved away from “dependency on centralized manufacturing to distribute information creation, processing and dissemination” (Strangelove & Bosley, 1994). Thus blogging marks a potential mass exodus from the corporate world as entrepreneurs engage the power of cyberspace.
The intellect individual is no longer subject to demands of time and place of the factory owner (Strangelove & Bosley, 1994). They can engage in their own creative production that is not hampered by the media giants; this often takes the form of broadcasting ideas that are out of the mainstream. This is exemplified with the Occupy Wall Street movement uterlising social media platforms such as twitter and Tumblr (micro and mass blogging platforms) in order to spread their message (Rock, 2011). The niche blogging devices allows for the movement to access their target audience on a global scale in such a way that breaks down traditional state barriers (Hitlin & Tan, 2011).
One aspect of the creative industries that was not fully considered before the Gutenberg press was intellectual property. Before the Gutenberg Revolution there was little notion of copyright; in fact the first copyright was granted, not to authors, but printers (Dewar, 1998). In 1469 a Venetian printer obtained a privilege to print and sell a given book for a given interval of time (Dewar, 1998). Before the 18th century, “European legal notions of property were typically confined to real (short for corporeal) estate and material objects” and the legal system had to evolve to include the incorporeal estates of intellectual property, it was decided “intellectual property is not held in perpetuity” (Dewar & Hwa, 2002). Previously there had been little concern with copyright because there was no sense of longevity with handwritten manuscripts; while many considered written texts to be authentic by Heidegger’s (1982) notion of ‘connection of the hand and the word’ the manuscripts could never be fixed in permanent form. But with the invention of the printing press came the desire to see one’s work in print and the need to ensure that it could not be altered, copied or misattributed in the way previous distribution methods allowed (Eisenstein, 1979).
For as long as printed works have been available to the broader society, those who rule have attempted to control the content produced. We see this relationship develop with the Tudor kings attempt to institutionalise censorship (Dewar & Hwa, 2002). Henry VII became the first monarch to publish a list of banned books in 1529. During this time he also implemented legislation that required owners of printing presses to have royal permits in order to operate (Dewar & Hwa, 2002).
In modernity, all forms of mass communication have been subject to either direct or indirect government control, manipulation or censorship as a result of the mass media’s corporate ownership (Strangelove & Bosley, 1994). This direct government intervention takes many forms. In China, for example, all citizens who wished to use the Internet initially had to register with police; this was eventually waived (Kertcher & Margalit, 2005). Instead an intense form of censorship was imposed (Mackinnon, 2012) echoing the 15th century church; the Chinese Government’s legitimacy relies on a central indisputable state sanctioned truth (Strangelove & Bosley, 1994). Recently censors banned any reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre, bloggers evaded the government by inventing the fictional date of ‘May 34th’ to discuss the event (Mackinnon, 2012).
While the Gutenberg press and Internet blogging share common ground in their role of acting as a catalyst in cultural change and the promotion of ideas and the spread of information there are a number of problems in comparing these two forms of publications. The two societal periods are so remote that the comparison may be nullified by the simple fact that society, technology and the political authorities have changed in the intervening centuries. The printing press provided one of the only sources of written information available to the literate, non-ecclesiastical public, while blogs are just one of the various information sources currently available to the public (Kertcher & Margalit, 2005). Technology is merely an enabler, paradigm shifts are related to social values, which differ depending on the time period and social contexts and can take decades to evolve. Therefore it is likely to be several decades before the full effects of the blogging age can be determined; the effects of the printing press took over a hundred years to be completely realised (Dewar, 1998). However unlike the printing press, the ubiquity of 21st century technology is far greater and therefore there is a greater likelihood that its influence will be more widespread (Dewar, 1998).
The printing press played both a unifying and fragmenting role, printing standardized languages while removing local dialects; this eventually fostered a national language and contributed to the evolution of national identities (Dewar & Hwa, 2002). Similarly the internet will likely lead to a greater standardization of language on an international level, although unlike the printing press it allows for geographically dispersed minorities to assert their identities (Dewar & Hwa, 2002). The Gutenberg press allowed for publishers to solicit corrections and contributions from readers, which can be incorporated in later publications (Eisenstein, 1979), likewise blogs allow for many-to-many feedback capabilities and sometimes allow readers to edit the posts.
New forms of publication and distribution have continually altered the creative industries. Both the printing press and blogs have enabled individuals to have a voice in the face of the controlling media giants. Eisenstein (1979) argues that the printing press “changed the conditions under which information was collected, stored, retrieved, criticised, discoursed and promoted” this was furthered by the Internet which Mathews (1997) labelled as “the most powerful engine of change in the relative decline of states and the rise of non-state actors.”
Gutenberg’s revolution created a fundamental change in society. It heralded a growth of literacy and encouraged the acquisition of knowledge and made that knowledge available to the broader community. It removed the elitism from the written word. Blogging has built on the egalitarianism created by Gutenberg and in many respects has sought to again decentralise knowledge, comments and thoughts by making them part of the society and removing them from the modern cloisters of centralised multinational corporations.
Reference list
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