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).
The historical points at which the act of publishing has been revolutionised mark the beginnings of great turning points of canonical western history. From the Gutenberg printing press to digital media, advances in publishing revolutionise the world in regards to the amplification, aggregation and distribution of knowledge, which has lead to large magnitudes of social change in our common era, beginning with the acceleration of the spread of literacy, to global social change leading to the democratisation of religion and politics we accept as standard in this current epoch. Accepting the definition of printing as the process of making content publicly known, we acknowledge that one impact of revolutionising publishing is indubitably the revolution of the distribution and aggregation of knowledge, hence, this essay will look at transitions in publishing technologies and how they have effected the educational spheres of the societies in which they transpired.
Movable-type presses are generally accepted as catalysing widespread democratisation of knowledge, while evidence suggests the concept was first used in China and India, this type of press was specific to the east until it was invented by Johannes Gutenberg, it is this Gutenberg moveable type press that this essay refers to. Gutenberg’s printing press being integrated into common use in the 15th century caused an “explosion of knowledge” according to Elizabeth Einstein in The Printing Press as an Agent of Change although various techniques of publishing via press were available to the publishing world at this time, they were laborious and time consuming, and thus less favourable to script. The Gutenberg press increased out-put and decreased the involved time and labour previously necessary in script, and thus, the revolution of print began with the distribution of published material growing from an exclusive public of the literate and affluent elite who could afford scribed print publications, to the wider public to whom printed content was suddenly affordable and widely distributed.
The Gutenberg press irrevocably changed the value of the published word, as before a script had been a relatively impermanent object, made on valuable skins that were prone to damage, particularly water damage, it is easy to see that the editionable book, with it's comparatively durable pages allowed for the value of the book to become less in regards to commodification. The book also decreased in exclusivity, with the ability to edition a large number of books meaning hat they could be disseminated throughout Europe inexpensively. It is here that we see the rates of literacy increase widely, as reading and the consumption of knowledge becomes relevant to the wider public of Europe. It is this democratisation of knowledge and the accelerated publics this democratisation encompasses that are cited by figures such as Marshall McLuhan, who wrote in his Gutenberg galaxy of the medium as the message (McLuhan, 1962) - the realisation of the symbiotic relationship between the way a message is distributed and the ramification this has on the reception it receives. Likewise, when speaking of the integration of computer technologies into the classroom, Hokanson and and Hooper suggest “New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop” (Hokanson & Hooper 2000). Thus, the ways in which print has revolutionised social institutions over history is an integral factor to the exponential revolutionising of human social behaviour over time.
Gutenberg did bot anticipate the effect his invention would have, his press had lasting impact of such great magnitude. The education of the masses was suddenly of great import, and this itself had many effects on the society of the epoch, many linguists point to the printing press and the drive behind the need for a standard language, a codified form of spelling in particular developing as a result. It is also argued that in this push for a unified language - newspapers that were geographically driven and had to all be in homogenous language - pushed for the idea of the nation-state where kingdoms or small townships were more valued. As education of the masses grew, their knowledge of the wider world grew and as such, their geographical world grew as news of far away courts and political decisions reached small town hamlets in no time at all comparatively to the speed of word of mouth and scribe. Here, we can see the origins of democratic politics as a growing necessity (Kraus, 2014), as politics became available for consumption to every literate being in Europe, as opposed to the literate elite. We also see education becoming more varied and widely distributed, allowing for the industrial revolution and the age of invention, an age in which the innovation of the masses was at a peak with the education of Great Britain being relatively homogenous and far-reaching across the nation-states.
Further, given the influence of the church at the time, it comes and no real surprise to learn that the first Gutenberg printed book was the bible, and the most influential book published being Martin Luther’s The 95 Theses. The Roman Catholic Church insisted that only members of the clergy were qualified to interpret the bible, however, the printing press allowed for Martin Luther to form a protestant religious education movement that would serve as the origins of Protestantism. Luther published complaints against the church’s corruption and espoused the translation of the bible into German allowing for the holy book to widely read and thus the Catholic Church open to critique that catalysed a break away from the church, albeit where it was intended to catalyse internal change. This was an immensely successful endeavour of Luther’s part, he is quoted in Rubin’s The Printing Press, Reformation and Legitimisation as stating;
“[The printing press is] God’s highest and ultimate gift of grace by which He would have His Gospel carried forward.” (Ruben, 2014)
The reformation’s spread however is very much attributed to the moveable type press, “the message of the Reformation spread from city to city through broadsheets and pamphlets” (Ruben, 2014) passed on from village to village through the hands of fervent, literate priests. Thus, the reformation spread throughout Europe and martin Luther became an instrumental figure in the irrevocable change in the church that has had lasting ramifications, forcing the church to reform internally against corruption, in the face of the destruction of the church hierarchies in protestant, or Huguenot, cities.
Thus, the major impacts of the integration of the Gutenberg printing press is are rooted in education, the rise in literacy, the decrease in value of the published word and the subsequent democratisation of published information to the general public and the massive colossal change this brought about, as attention and information was given a larger public, the public became more actively involved in politics, religion, the literary and academic world to the effect of an advancing and industrialised society.
The impacts of the digital age are as unexpected by it founders and hold similar gravity to the integration of the printing press in the 15th century. Although there is little academic analysis of the impacts of the digital age as it is relatively current and sill in its primary developing stages, there have been many studies and observations into the digital age and the so called ‘information age’ that it has birthed. With the rising commodification of attention on the Internet, complications towards different approaches to archives and the aggregation or lack thereof of available information on the Internet, the educational sphere is seeing massive change, not necessarily for the better, the end of which has yet to be experienced. Living in an epoch categorised by this information “world of flow” (Guillard, 2014), the rates at which we consume information in the current epoch are unprecedented, as are the ways in which we engage with media. The current monopoly of knowledge is not specific to one medium and to one strategy of consumption, with the laptop, smartphone, television, radio and tablet, and traditional forms of consumption through books and newspapers, there are innumerable combinations of consumption that are all fraught with complications arising from media consumption. The greatest challenge to the current epoch is the aggregation of information in a way that allows for constructive learning and satisfactory education as a result. As the sheer amount of information available to us rises, it is conjectured by many that the quality of engagement and attention given to information if decreasing. This is a problem that has been approached in many strategies, one significant strategy is trough social media aggregation sites, tumblr is a good example of this as it allows for the ability for the user to curate a range of blogs to engage with, aggregating a network of information sources onto one scrolling ‘dashboard.’ As Guillard identifies, this is of benefit to the user in that the aggregation of content allows for easily access content, but of course this has many implications, the curation of ones own sources often results in biased networks;
"…throughout my studies of social media, I've been astonished by the people who think that XYZ - whatever site - is for people like themselves": homosexuals thinking that Friendster was a gay dating site because they only encounter other homosexuals there, teenagers who believed MySpace was a Christian community because all the profiles they've seen there contained quotations from the Bible....”
(Guillard, 2014)
It is this flaw in aggregation that is a danger to education in the current epoch, if an English speaking student uses a search engine such as Google to find references for an assignment, they will likely only consume sources of the English language and western perspective, likewise, the collected data from websites such as google are applied in algorithms that will aggregate the results in an order in accordance to the previous searches of the user, an algorithm that provides an exponentially layered and growing bias with each search.
It seems we have moved to a point in information flow that has changed again the value of information in our epoch, in the wake of the Gutenberg press, the monetary value and status of the book and published content was decreased to the effect of a widening public and heightened attention towards this content. In the digital media world today however, we face the challenge of the devaluation of information to the point where attention to information is scarce and sporadic, to the affect of content being driven towards our senses and appeals as a wider community in order to engage and gain readership, and where attention is monetised (Parker, 2009). This is an issue for education, and an issue for culture, as a singular network is often what is engaged with in the contemporary epoch, despite are many networks being available for engagement with.
Aggregation with social media is still undoubtedly in demand however, and in regards to education and scientific advancement, it is particularly successful. This success lies in exponentially successful content curation, websites and mediums which do not display new content but instead curate the masses of content on a certain topic in regards to relevance, reliability and frequently use a tagging system that allows for easily specific data and information to be found quickly amongst large quantities on content. For example, websites that aggregate archives of information via tags and RSS readers can be engaged with via a subscription type format via RSS, many prominent academic journal websites offer RSS feeds, including PubMed and Nature (Unimelb, 2014). As described in this article put out by the University of Melbourne “Subscribing to the RSS feeds of academic journals is thus an effective way to stay informed about developments in your research area, including new publications and notifications about calls-for-papers”(Unimelb, 2014). Content bookmarking websites allow for the curation of content again, but for an academic or scientist, this strategy is advantageous and allows for accessibility to rare content (Souza, 2014). On an everyday knowledge based analysis it is easy to see how content curation on sites such as Reddit and Digg.com allow for communities to speak and share content specific to certain topics, the success of Reddit for example is testament to the market for aggregation websites.
While this is a clear success, the application of computer technology in the classroom specifically is highly critiqued. The development of the educational psyche in schooling has been challenged by the integration of new technologies with many schools having to apply funding to make available tablets or laptops for students. Hokanson & Hooper suggest many negative derivative effects from this, citing easy access to aggregational and curated cites as taking a learning process away from students who before computer technology, would have had to curate relevant information from books rather after consuming a lot of irrelevant information and coming to critical decisions over what to include. This comes back to McLuhan’s argument that the medium is the message – here, the implementation of computer technologies has completely altered the ways in which a student engages with content and develops their own education.
In the light of frequent educational advancement in the digital age and the over saturation of content that is provided in this current epoch, it is valuable to look back at the ways in which the Gutenberg press revolutionised knowledge and education in the 15th century and beyond. The throws of a world of information flow ill have effects that have not yet been identified, and may not have completely developed, but the mirroring of the magnitude of change between the 15th century and the 21st century suggest that the effects will be far-reaching and irrevocable.
Reference List
Eisenstein, Elizabeth (1979) ‘Defining the initial shift: some features of print culture’ in The Printing Press as an Agent of Change Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 43-163
Brannon, Barbara A, (2007) ‘The Laser Printer as an Agent of Change’ in Baron, Sabrina et al., (eds.) Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Einsenstein Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press: 353-364
Eisenstein, Elizabeth (1979) ‘Defining the initial shift: some features of print culture’ in The Printing Press as an Agent of Change Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 43-163
Guillard, H. (2014). What Is Implied by Living in a World of Flow. [online] Truth-out.org. Available at: http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/87704:what-is-implied-by-living-in-a-world-of-flow
Hokanson, B. and Hooper, S. (2000). Computers as cognitive media: examining the potential of computers in education. Computers in Human Behavior, 16(5), pp.537-552.
Kraus, D. (2014). Pirates, the Printing Press and Global Democracy. Huffington Post. [online] Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-kraus/pirates-the-printing-pres_b_5575113.html.
McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg galaxy. Canada; University of Toronto Press
Parker, A. (2009). User Contribution in Media Consumption. [online] Available at:http://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/287466218/user-contribution-in-media-consumption
Ruben, J. (2014). The Printing Press, Reformation, and Legitimization. 1st ed. [ebook] Chapman University. Available at: http://web.stanford.edu/dept/islamic_studies/cgi-bin/web/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/rubin.pdf.
Shasel, (2014). The Influence of Printing on the English Language and its Development. [online] Ireland.iol.ie. Available at: http://ireland.iol.ie/~afifi/BICNews/Shasel/shasel89.htm
Souza, J. (2014). Content Curation Vs Content Aggregation: The Basics. [online] Socialmediatoday.com. Available at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/content-curation-vs-content-aggregation-basics.
University of Melbourne, (2014). Tools for Social Media Curation and Content Aggregation. [Blog] UniMelb. Available at: http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/23researchthings/2014/07/14/thing-15-tools-for-social-media-curation-and-content-aggregation/.