You say you want a revolution...well, you know...

Reading Eisenstein reminded me of what I think we’re largely trying to do in this class. She acknowledges that scholars and theorists have noted that the invention of Printing was vital in spreading literacy. However, she also thinks that scholars have left our any discussion about how printing really changed the cultural environment of the day, including the already literate. So she dives in. She looks at the specifics of how printing was a revolution in all aspects. Print standardized knowledge in ways that writing never could, and it also allowed knowledge to be preserved. It’s no coincidence that the Renaissance and Reformation, as well as the growth in Scientific thought occurred post-printing press.

A lot of the concepts in Printing Revolution, are familiar to us with the other ideas we’ve discussed in class. Eisenstein talks about the onset of printing as being evolutionary and revolutionary. On the one hand it begun, kind of like in Remediation, as “woodblock printing only better” or “writing only better.” And then as it became an agent of change, as Eisenstein says, she talks about printing as a revolution. The internet, as have other new medias in their time, in some ways evolve and in other ways revolutionize (revolve).

Another part I liked, was how the writer Montaigne took into account that his audience would be widely diverse and wrote in an informal tone to meet the needs of such readers. We recognize that as an important step in writing: knowing your audience. Plato and the Sophists also knew that was important in speech-making. I could see how if books were handwritten and expensive then few would own more than a small splattering of books. And if that was all the reading you had to digest, the kind of writing you would produce would be thus limited. They say that is you want to learn new “better” words, it’s better to read more than to just try to memorize from a dictionary. Almost arguing that being exposed to different writings can make you a better writer. Of course the flip side of that could be that reading other’s writings could limit your ability to create original work. Then you have to discuss what is original? Is being evolutionary or revolutionary more original? Can you have one and not the other? Which I don’t believe you can. Kind of like immediacy and hypermediacy, both always exist.

I think the best part of Eisenstein’s critique is the idea that the printing press was an agent of change. I think we can take that idea and spread it to new media, and social media, and how those are also agents of change. They’ve changed the way we meet and talk to one another. We’re moving from analog to digital. Google, for instance, is working diligently to have all books published online. In some sense there is a feeling of accomplishment for some writers knowing that their book is on Google Books. An old professor of mine for instance recently found that her yet to be published book was on Google. In some ways we’re already at the stage that there are writings available only in digital and no paper copy exists. I’m sure that will become more frequent.

On a side note, I wonder what people would think if I said I was a published writer...I do after all, have to click “publish” when I finish a blog... But I guess the publishing revolution hasn’t quite occurred yet.