Printing, Uniformity, Optimism

Some intriguing commentary on the linkage of the emergence of printing with spreading of uniformity and its influence on an optimistic world, from Diarmaid MacCulloch's excellent history: The Reformation Here he speaks on the influence of the emergence of printing during that time:

...Printing, which produced multiple identical copies of a text, encouraged a familiarity with uniformity, very different from the individuality of a manuscript. That in turn was able to produce a sense of how significant it was when differences occurred: Uniformity, paradoxically put a premium on individuality. A culture based on manuscripts is conscious of the fragility of knowledge, and the need to preserve it. A priority must be to keep it secure simply to avoid the physical destruction of a single precious source, and that fosters an attitude that guards rather than spreads knowledge.... a manuscript culture is going to believe very readily in decay ... because copying knowledge from one manuscript to another is a very literal source of corruption. This is much less obvious in the print medium: Optimism may be the mood rather than pessimism ... (p. 71)

Printing influencing the form of ideas? How might the ability to cross link on the web, to blog and comment, to transfer memes readily have on our modes of thought?

Comments

[Ross Mayfield]

Or further, the impermanence of content and the familiarity with the family of people behind it.

Great find.

[Chris Peterson]

I would venture that, looking back, we will note that the individuality of the internet as a communication technology put a premium on uniformity. Pessimism will return as the dominant mood. A great number of people now possess the possibility of communicating, yet very few will be able to make their voices heard above the rest, and thus truly achieve communication. Sadly, Fox News and its ilk may only become an even greater cultural icon as society attempts to cling to a uniform perspective, while this very uniform perspective is in the process of decay.

[Mark Federman]

Franz, it's clear you are missing a whole lot of history of media studies, and therefore a lot of the context that informs this world we're in.

Try starting with Marshall McLuhan's Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographical Man and then Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. (Those should keep you busy for about a year! :)

Seriously, if you are interested in the effects of the phonetic alphabet, then the manuscript culture and the emergence of the printing press on cognition, McLuhan is the place to start. Most interestingly, in UM (which was published in 1964) McLuhan predicts the effects that we have now experienced with ubiquitous instantaneous computing, and the effects of the blogosphere on social structures and dynamics.

(This is, of course, the sort of stuff we follow here at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto - the place media studies was invented, lo those many years ago.)

[Franz]

Mark,

I don't claim to have done much in the way of media studies, it was just the concept that intrigued me. It did get people talking about it :) Thanks very much for the references and links, I will follow up. In particular the link to the McLuhan program, which I will pass along to others in my group.

Regards

[Gus Gollings]

Some other interesting works on the effect of print:

Eisenstein, E. L. (1979). The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press.

Goody, J. (1987). The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, Cambridge University Press.

Febvre, L. P. V. and H.-J. Martin (1976). The Coming of the Book: the Impact of Printing, 1450-1800. London, Verso.

Man, J. (2002). The Gutenberg Revolution. London, Review.