OUTLINE
Introduction....
What do god, Joseph Campbell, IBM, Harvard University, New York City, Amtrak, Barnes and Noble, St. Augustine, American Airlines, Elvis Presley, The National Institute of Health, AT and T, and Australia all have in common. They all have their own website on the World Wide Web on the Internet.
The advent of the printing press replaced the entire scribe industry, made books widely available, and changed the controlling powers from church to state, improved maps, anatomy and virtually created modern science. However, the printing press did have its critics. The humanists criticized it as not affecting intellectual and spiritual life since the printing press was only a tool, an instrument. Monks were afraid that their devotion and diligence to hand writing books would be affected. People who started reading more were criticized for not socializing as much and were given the label Asilent scanners@. Despite its criticism the printing press transformed society intellectually, culturally, religiously, politically and technologically forever and we have yet to see it abate. As Marshall McLuhan stated in recent history, The Medium is the Message. This realization begins to give us some insight into how information and the flow of ideas affect us today. I will first begin by taking a look at how the printing press technology of the 15th century affected the renaissance, reformation and modern science. Secondly, in the 18th century I will take a look at the telegraph and how information and communication at the speed of light affected the modern world. And lastly, in light of prior technology I will take a look at the postmodern world of today and the effect technology and especially computers and the Internet is having on our culture, our religion and our worldview. Maybe we can answer the question ourselves, AIs the Medium the Message.@
Scribal Culture
The scribal book culture of the middle ages was fluctuating, uneven and multiform. There were the bookshops of ancient Rome, the Alexandra library, medieval monasteries and university towns that contained the majority of hand written books. All library collections were subject to contraction, and all texts in manuscripts were liable to get corrupted after being copied over the course of time.
Outside limited special centers the texture of scribal culture was so thin that heavy reliance was placed on oral transmission even by literate elites. Book learning was governed by reliance on the spoken word - producing a hybrid half-oral, half-literate culture that had no precise counterpart today. The literate person was more likely to become his own scribe. There are no rough estimates of late scribal book output since:
…Book provisions for diverse monastic orders varied
...Mendicant friars had different arrangements from monks...
...Preachers made their own anthologies of sermons
...Semi-lay orders attempted to provide primers and catechisms for everyman
...The revival of scriptoria during the century before Gutenberg was the last revival of its kind
...Valued texts were barely preserved from extinction
...Survival of texts often hinged on the occasional copy being made by an interested scholar who acted as his own scribe
...The difficulty of making even one Aidentical@ copy of a significant technical work was such that AMen of Learning@ had to engage in Aslavish copying@ of tables, diagrams and unfamiliar terms.
Early Print Culture
By about
1440 the art of printing from movable type had been invented, and,
1454 and 1455 from his press at Mainz, Johann Gutenberg produced in
The first dated documents, some letters of indulgence made from type case in a mold;
1456 the so-called Mazarian Bible(named from a copy in the library of Cardinal Mazarian). By 1464 there was a printing press in Italy, near Rome;
1468 one in Switzerland, with Erasmus as the press corrector; by
1470 there was a press in France, at the Sorbonne; by
1471 one in Utrecht,
1473 in Holland,
1474 Spain,
1476 Manchester (Caxton),
1539 Mexico City and
1638 Cambridge, Massachusetts. Already in the
Middle of the sixteenth century, since the new art seemed to be stimulating too much freedom of thought, repressive measures were introduced by...the churches and states... and the quality of work greatly declined; but in the
Eighteenth century a revival occurred, and the beautiful types of Caslon, Baskerville, and Bodoni were designed.
Unlike the scribal book culture we can estimate output, arrive at averages, and trace trends. Rough estimates of the total output of all printed materials during the interval between 1450 and 1500 or about 50 years indicated that the average early editions ranged between 200-1000 copies.
Unknown anywhere in Europe before the mid-fifteenth century, printer's workshops would be found in every important
municipal center by 1500. There
was a marked increase in the output of books with an estimated 8 million books
printed between 1453 and 1500 which is equal to what scholars estimate was
produced between 300AD and 1450AD or 1150 years. In the early print culture scholars have been able to estimate
that for every 1 book that a scribe could produce the
printing press could produce 1025 printed books.
In fact, the initial increase in output did strike
contemporary observers as sufficiently remarkable so as to suggest supernatural
intervention. Printers began
experimenting with graduated heads, footnotes, tables
of contents; superior figures, cross-references, title pages....
Hand drawn illustrations were replaced by more easily duplicated woodcuts and engravings which eventually helped to revolutionize technical literature by introducing exactly repeatable pictoral statements into all kinds of reference works.
Also, the fact that scattered readers could view identical images, maps, mathmatetical tables and diagrams simultaneously constituted a communications revolution in itself.
Typography for text, engravings for the images, letters, numbers and pictures were all alike subject to repeatedability at the end of the 15th century.
This all led to a new shop structure which entailed close contacts among diversely skilled workers and encouraged new forms of cross-cultured interchange.
Distribution outlets with handbills, circulars and sales catalogues.
Printer's centers would advertise themselves with statements such as: more readable text, more complete and better-arranged indexes, more careful proofreading and editing.
There was a steady flow of orders for the printing of ordinances, edicts, bills, indulgences, broadsides and tracts. Early printers put their firm's name, emblem, and shop address on the front page of their books.
Literacy at the end of the 16th century was guestimated at just above 50 percent in Early modern Europe and before 50 percent was estimated at below 50 percent.
Renaissance
Printed images—
Exhibit 5(A printed index which provided free publicity for titles and guided Protestant towards its authors, such as Machiavelli, who could be advertised as forbidden fruit. Machiavelli’s name has been added to this copy of the Prohibited Index, 1559)
Creativity
Aretino (1492-1556)
humanist writer
di Petro (1508-1580)
architect
Bellori (1615-1696)
writer and painter
Reformation
There were pictures of the catholic believer holding rosary beads in contrast to a reformed protestant believer reading the bible....
Individualism was promoted.
Martin Luther (1438-1536)
John Calvin (1509-1564)
Rules for an
Anabaptist Community 1527 12 Articles
Catholic Reformation
- Council of Trent 1545-1563
Hammer of Witches
1486
Sixteenth-century heresy and schism shattered Christendom so completely that even after religious warfare had ended, ecumenical movements led by men of good will could not put all the pieces together again. Not only were there too many splinter groups, separatists, and independent sects who regarded a central church government as incompatible with true faith; but also the main lines of cleavage had been extended across continents and carried overseas along with Bibles and breviaries. Within a few generations, the gap between Protestant and Catholic had widened sufficiently to give rise to contrasting literary cultures and life styles.
Orthodox beliefs and institutions were also affected and the invention of the printing press made it possible, for the first time in Christian history, to insist upon uniformity in worship.
Pre-print the liturgical texts could be produced only in manuscript....
But now printed editions were produced with uniform texts and rubrics and since the Latin language was retained as the medium of worship in all western countries of the Roman obedience, the same texts could be recited and the same ceremonies performed, in the same way, throughout the Catholic world.
Printed lists of prohibited books-see
exhibit 4(Prohibited book list, 1670 which listed Copernicus’
and Galileo’s books as prohibited from reading…also on the other side is an
example of some problems that are able to be corrected easily with printing…
the so called wicked bible,
1631)
---Spontaneous growth and change and adaptation of the liturgy were prevented, and the worship ----Roman Catholic Church fossilized.
Modern Science
Book of nature transformed----before travel to other locations to read by scholars-now scholars could have their own library
Cosmology-see exhibit 1(a page from Kepler’s Tables, 1627, that provided so accurate that encouraged a favorable reception to Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.
See exhibit- 2(the Astronomer, Tycho Brahe, where on his title page he stresses his noble ancestry and exemplifies the tendency to self-advertise)
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Galileo Galiei (1564-1642)
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Principia
Anatomy –see exhibit 3(An example of a visual aid with the keyed text on the back comes from Andreas Vesalius, 1555…He wrote, On the Fabric of the Human Body
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)
Amboise Pare (1510-1590)
Treatment of Gunshot Wounds (Control of Hemorrhaging)
William Harvey (1578-1657)
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood
Maps
European Discovery and Colonization
Introduction to
Cosmography 1507
Sir Thomas Moore (1478-1535)
Utopia - ideal society on communist economic principle
Demands of the
Peasants 1524
Niccoli Machiavelli (1469-1527)
The Prince- Political Thinker
Thomas Hobbes 16-17th
century
John Locke (1632-1704)
Second Treatise of Nature
Exhibit 5(British shutter telegraph, 1797, Each of the six panels could be open (horizontal) or closed (vertical, as shown), giving a total of 64 different combinations).
Recognizing the military value of the telegraph, the
governments of other European countries, notably Sweden and Britain, had
quickly copied C1appe's design or adopted variations upon it. In Britain, the
Admiralty ordered the construction of a line of telegraph towers in 1795 to
facilitate communication between London and the ports of the south coast during
the war with France. George Murray, a clergyman and amateur scientist, designed
the British telegraph and it consisted of six wooden shutters, each of which
could be opened or closed to give sixty-
four possible combinations (since 64 = z x z x z x z
x z xz = z to the 6th power). Soon, telegraph towers were springing
up all over Europe.
Electric
Telegraph---NOT THE FLOW OF INFORMATION BUT THE SPEED—THE SPEED OF
LIGHT
Morse code
Growth-explosive
1861-transcontinental telegraph across the US to California- eliminated the Pony Express
Operators learned to read the messages by listening to the clicking…and during quiet times they could play chess, chat, etc.
Messages between New York and Chicago, which had
previously taken a month to arrive, could be delivered almost instantly;
national and global markets were galvanized by the increasing flow of
information. Any business that wanted to stay competitive had no choice but to
embrace the new technology. The result was an irreversible acceleration in the
pace of business life, which has continued to this day. And it led to a new and
unexpected problem, as W. E. Dodge, a New York businessman, explained in a
speech in 1868. "If the army and navy, diplomacy, science, literature and
the press can claim special interest in the telegraph, surely the merchant must
have as deep an interest," he said, "but I am not prepared to say
that it has proved to be an unmixed blessing." Before the telegraph, Dodge
explained, New York merchants dealing in international commerce received
updates from their foreign associates once or twice a month, though the
information obtained in this way was usually several weeks old by the time it
arrived. Those involved in national trade would be visited by their country
customers twice a year on their semiannual visits to the city, and spent the
summer and winter resting, looking over accounts and making plans for the
future. "Comparatively, they had an easy time," said Dodge. "But
now all this is changed, and there are doubts whether the telegraph has been so
good a friend to the merchant as many have supposed. Now, reports of the
principal markets of the world are published every day, and our customers are
continually posted by telegram. Instead of making a few large shipments in a
year, the merchant must keep up constant action, multiplying his business over
and over again. He has to keep up constant intercourse with distant
correspondents, knows in a few weeks the result of shipments which a few years
ago would not have been known for months, orders the proceeds invested in
commodities, the value of which is well understood, and which are again sold
before their arrival. He is thus kept in continual excitement, without time for
quiet and rest.
"The merchant goes home after a day of hard
work and excitement to a late dinner, trying amid the family circle to forget
business, when he is interrupted by a telegram from London, directing, perhaps,
the purchase in San Francisco of barrels of flour, and the poor man must
dispatch his dinner as hurriedly as possible in order to send off his message
to California. The business-
Man of the present day must be continually on the
jump, the slow express train will not answer his purpose, and the poor merchant
has no other way in which to work to secure a living for his family. He must
use the telegraph." The information supplied by the telegraph was like
A drug to businessmen, who swiftly became addicted.
In combination with the railways, which could move goods quickly from one place
to another, the rapid supply of information dramatically changed the way
business was done.
Suddenly, the price of goods and the speed with
which they could be delivered became more important than their geographic
location. Tradesmen could have several potential suppliers or markets at their
disposal and were able to widen their horizons and deal directly with people
whom it would have taken days to reach by mail. Direct transactions between
producers and customers were made possible without having to go through middlemen;
retailers, farmers, and manufacturers found that by bypassing intermediaries
they could offer more competitive prices and save on commissions paid to
wholesalers. Suppliers could keep smaller inventories, since there was less
need to guard against uncertainties, and stock could be ordered and replenished
quickly. Telegraphy and commerce thrived in a virtuous circle. "The
telegraph is used by commercial men to almost as great an extent as the
mail,"
remarked the superintendent of a telegraph line from
Wall Street to Boston in 1851. Those
places beyond the reach of the network in the early days were acutely aware of
their disadvantage. "The
telegraph has become one of the essential means of
commercial transactions," declared the St. Louis Republican in 1847.
"Commerce, wherever lines exist, is carried on by means of it, and it is
impossible, in the nature of things, that St. Louis merchants and businessmen
can compete
with those of other cities if they are without it. Steam is one means of commerce; the telegraph now is another, and a man may as well attempt to carry on successful trade by means of the old flatboat and keel against a steamboat, as to transact business by the use of the mails against the telegraph.
Stocks
Misunderstanding about telegraph…Another
story concerned a woman in Prussia, who went to a telegraph office in 1870 with
a dish full of sauerkraut,
which she asked to have telegraphed to her son, who was a soldier fighting in
the war between Prussia and France. The operator had great difficulty
convincing
her that the telegraph was not capable of
transmitting objects. But the woman insisted that she had heard of soldiers
being ordered to the front by telegraph. "How could so many soldiers have been sent to
France by telegraph?" she asked.
One story from the 1840s tells of a man who went
into the telegraph office at Shore ditch station in London on the day of the
Derby, an annual horse race, and explained that he had left his luggage and a
shawl in the care of a friend at another station-the station that just happened
to be
nearest the racetrack (DECEPTION).
conducted an on-line wedding
Telegram was said to have "widened the range of human
thought was
credited with improving the standard of journalism and literature;
It was described as "the greatest instrument, of power over earth which
the ages of human history had revealed
Conclusions of printing and telegraph
Creativity
Reform or
rebirth
Individualism
New world
view and new view of ourselves
Current-
Computers and Internet
MEDLARS medical database 1960s (pp136-137)
maintained at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland for the National Library of Medicine. The MEDLARS database ran on a mainframe with access available only from a single console. There were no public terminals. Researchers wanting to use the database submitted requests for information on slips of paper, just as if they were requesting a book from the closed stacks. The library staff transcribed these requests onto standard forms and typed them into the console keyboard by hand. The answers came back a day or two later in the form of printouts from an IBM line printer but things did not proceed as expected. Researchers inquiring after information found to their dismay that a request for a list of titles of papers on a particular disease or drug might result in hundreds of feet of dense printout. Notices went up in the MEDLARS area warning people to be extremely cautious about how they worded their requests for information. Still piles of paper proliferated. There reason was simple---there were simply too many data on each subject for the existing search protocols to handle. Key-word searches, the common method, simply did not work with so many data, because several thousand abstracts might share the same key words. Buried in the abstracts themselves was critical information by which they could be separated, but even programs that searched the abstracts themselves for key words or phrases found too much... The most advanced thinking about this problem was not about search protocols but about the abstract idea of searching and the ways searching was done not in computers but in actual interaction with humans.
Doctor and Julie Grahamm
MUDs-AVA-disabled woman
There was a question asked of Marvin McLuhan in 1978 printed in his book, Global Village Transformations in world life and media in the 21st century.p.143, Is there any use of the digital computer which could create a new bulwark for the individual?
His answer:
Yes, what some researchers have called the new home information services in which the computer is utilized by a person to organize particular data needs; that is, to order groceries or machine parts, home security, specialized news items, answering services, and paid work at home. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a salable kind.
Question: Well, in what way could such a service create a new kind of personal protection?
MM: It could create more personal leisure. Having more leisure will encourage people to Adrop out@ to enhance their sense of identity. If there jobs are becoming routine and not helping the necessities of self-definition, then being able to get that occupation done within less time than was previously required, will enable people to set aside large blocks of leisure time with which to explore a hobby, a sport, a secret avocation. In other words, more time to Adrop out@ and Atune in@ on themselves.
The internet is like a forest and each website is like a tree and you, like a knight in King Arthur's Court, - in order to get the Grail you have to find your own path into the forest - a path that has never been used before.