Printing Press- The Internet of middle ages
Brief Summary of Impact of Major Information Technologies
Article Summary :- The internet has transformed our modern society. The unintended impact (second & third order effects) of this technology appears more transformational than the intended ones. While we as current generation might believe we are living in unique times, there have been technologies in the past which had lasting impact on society & created entirely new power structures. In this article, we will attempt to summarise one such technology - Printing Press & how it shaped the immediate & long term future forever.We will also see few uncanny similarities between the internet & Printing press.
Introduction
For thousand of years , we humans were a distributed & decentralised group of varied tribes- primarily subsisting on hunting & gathering. For a long long time , in-fact apart from Homo Sapiens, there were other Human species ( such as Neanderthals in European continent) . Eventually though, Homo Sapiens took over the world. How did it become feasible?
In Sapiens , author Yuval Harari attributes it to Homo Sapien’s ability to co-ordinate in large numbers. Due to our innate ability to believe in common myths that only exist within our shared reality we humans inhabit & has no physical reality - e.g. Religion, Culture, Country etc.- , Homo Sapiens could co-ordinate in large numbers & vanquish other far stronger species & animals.
But how were the myths disseminated & diffused among the masses so quickly?
The answer is Information technology - Not the Internet of today - but first starting from ancient writing technologies to hand written books to printing press to Radio, TV & eventually the Internet .
Without the cognitive revolution & institutional development, we would not have been able to co-ordinate beyond 150 individuals( its called Dunbar Number) & probably would resemble our closest Ape cousins . The gist behind Dunbar number is that in Apes & other primates, there is correlation between brain size & size of their social groups. Maintaining social connections in tribes require significant investment of time, energy & emotions such as gossiping, grooming, participation in traditions etc. In order to scale beyond the limits of 150 , Institutional & Technological innovation is necessitated.
In the distant past , Tribes were traditionally hostile to each other & often fought for resources. Today, we have global supply chain distributed across modular components that is enmeshed together to produce the final product. We will attempt to journey through time to unearth how each technology shaped the society & culture overtime.
In this article, we will look at the impact of similar such technology :- Printing press & how it transformed the landscape forever.
Pre-Printing Press Era
Limited Communication:- Ordinary individuals relied heavily on memory & spoken words before writing developed . In fact when writing first began to enter mainstream, many people worried that this will lead to forgetfulness. Since travel also was not common, most informations remained localised. Reading was limited since books were expensive & required knowledge of Latin.
Worries about a
new technology & its potential side effects
is another consistent thread found across rise of all new major information technologies - as we will witness in next series of articles.
Prior to printing press, paper based writing had been invented long back in China. However, most of the books were hand written by Scribes. Hence, it was slow & time consuming to churn out new ideas & propagate it quickly among the masses.
Books & consequently new ideas were monopoly of large institutions such as Churches. Most of the books were in the holy language of the time - latin & hence not accessible to ordinary people en masse.
Here we can see an earlier example of how control of a particular technology, handwritten paper based books in this case, was enabling certain large institutions to exert extreme control. Any ideas that threatened Church power could easily be controlled since whatever limited books were created by the heretics - could easily be destroyed. Similarly, oral dissenting ideas had limited scale due to geographical & language barriers.
Invention of Printing Press
Printing press invented around 1450 in Germany by a goldsmith named- Gutenberg. He was a curious individual with enough resources to put into practice his ideas.
The printing press diffused quickly across European cities within 50 years.
Initial Support from Church
Initially, the roman catholic church ,instead of viewing printing press as a threat, supported the printing press & were the first customers . The assumption being that the new technology will further accelerate the ideas & power of Church across Europe. For education of priests & various other church rituals, uniform manuscripts were needed. Gutenberg’s initial customers were indeed Churches & church controlled universities.
Impact on Power of Church
Till early 1500s, Roman Catholic church was all powerful centralised entity across western Europe. As is often the case, the extreme power led to misuse & corruption in the institution. For example, believers could simply pay to Church for seeking forgiveness for their sins. In addition , due to Church diktat, the bible could only be translated in Latin & hence provided Catholic Church control firm grip on all major aspects of Christianity.
Church could easily suppress rival ideas. Church persecuted whoever displeased them & even people were burnt at stake for supposed blasphemy.
With printing press though, new ideas were not only difficult but impossible to control. Earlier, a new idea could only go so far due to language barriers(books were written in latin mainly as mentioned earlier), geographical limits to oral ideas & iron first control of Church on book publishing with the help of scribes.
One of the leaders of the rival protestant reformation, Martin Luther saw the potential of printing press & published his ideas in open. In the pre-printing press days, he could have been silenced very easily. However, his criticisms of Church practices could now travel wide & far very quickly. In the first half of 16th century, Martin Luther published almost 1/3rd of entire publishing in German language. Within 3 years of his thesis list being published, over 300,000 copies were sold.
The protestant reformation became primary means to resist the authority of the Church for other powerful entities such as Kings & wean away power from it.
In Germany, many kings adopted Protestantism & broke away from Roman Catholic Church. Even England under Henry VIII separated from Church & consolidated political power to himself .
Broader Impacts of Printing Press
Early Adopters :- Any new technology requires a set of users who adopt the technology for its perceived benefits & hence helps in further prorogation of the technology. While, Church could be argued to be the firsts set of customers for the technology- viewing it incorrectly as another means to increase power, the merchant class as Primary users & commerce as major use case really led to realisation of full potential of the printing press. Commerce was a major source of wealth in cities at the time. The printing press allowed creation of textbooks that student could use for a career in business. Math textbooks were produced in masses to impart requisite knowledge in the subject.
Economic Impact
Due to high transport costs, commerce between cities was expensive. The positive spill over impact of printing press was , therefore, localised. The printing press attracted other industries required for it to flourish - paper shops, translators, teachers , students, schools etc. Therefore, cities which adopted the technology first had immense economic benefits . A recurring theme we will witness in other technologies where we see how the early adopters benefit immensely from adoption of such technologies early on.
The even more major impact of printing press was that it became easier to voice & disseminate new ideas. The printing press created need for Machine operators, scholars, marketers of books being published & countless new jobs were created. A new category of “printer-scholars” also originated, adept at each task required to enable a printing press, the entrepreneurs of the time. This increased productivity for merchants & intellectual environment for local environment flourished.
The number of books published rose exponentially , leading to immense positive economic impact.
Business Model Change
Earlier with Scribe handwritten books , the number of input hours was directly proportional to output i.e. if a scribe started duplicating a book with certain speed, there was little he could do change the time taken to produce the output dramatically. In summary , book production had “variables costs with production”-limiting its scale .
Printing press in comparison involved “high fixed costs & low variables costs“. It required significant upfront capital to set-up the press. However , once set-up, the fixed costs expenses could be spread across as many books as possible. Higher the scale, better the business. In fact , with printing press, the costs of producing one book had come down to 1/8th of had written books, not to mention the time it required to create the copy was drastically low.
Importance of Distribution Channel
Books existed prior to Printing press. It just created a new mechanism to produce & distribute the books. While the production issue had been solved for, distribution channel took some time to figure out for entrepreneurs .
Even though Gutenberg was first to invent the moving printing press & produced 200 copies Bible copies in latin within 3 years, he lacked the proper distribution network to sell it across to masses quickly to recover the costs. In fact , he incurred huge debt in the process & died poor. This is akin to e-books on Internet in the early 1990s . E-books had immense value however it could be monetised sufficiently only after Amazon consolidating the discovery & distribution of e-books.
Subsequent printers made the rational decision to set-up shop around appropriate distribution networks. Venice was the shipping hub of Mediterranean back then & large movements of traders & merchants transiting across. These ships started carrying textbooks of varied kind & even “breaking news” from across the world. Printers from Venice would sell pamphlets to sailors .
Upon arrival on its shores, the sailors would hand it over to local printers for further copying . These would be ,subsequently , copied for further distribution across towns. News reading, thus, was an entirely new use case devised due to commercialisation of printing press.
Rise of Niche Interest Groups :- Book shops & public libraries started springing up across cities - which earlier were concentrated in & around Churches primarily. The variety of topics in journals, newspapers & books saw dramatic rise. Once crucial development was the rise of formation of groups around similar topics of interest ( Ancestor to FB groups).
While in hindsight , it is obvious that printing press threatened the existing power structures built around monopoly of hand-written books, it was not as obvious back then as it seems today.
In fact , book publishers marketed the new process & technology as - artificial writing-devoid of soul that is involved with Hand written & copied books. Recall how even today many argue for “special properties” of Hard cover Books compared to e-books or Blogs.
The printing press also produced as output the2 column books which seemed familiar to scribe Hand copied books. The scribe copying books by hand though did not disappear with the advent of Printing press. It rather became “luxury” to have hand written books-commanding premium. The books from printing press became mass market product. Again a similarity here can be done between prices of PaperBack books & e-books. Due to inherent cost structure differences, an e-books is way cheaper compared to physical books.
Impact on Language
Printing press made non-latin languages far more prominent .Since the business model needed to cater to masses on large scale to recover the high capital fixed costs of setting-up the printing press , the books were printed in largest spoken vernaculars, say Vernacular A. Now, a reader speaking a different vernacular, say Vernacular B, needed to learn vernacular A to be able to access wealth of new books being published. Consequently, smaller vernacular in sub-regions vanished gradually.
Prior to printing press, varied dialects existed across the European continent & majority of populace were illiterate. However, printing press standardised the language tremendously & led to a sense of identity among larger populations - eventually establishing the foundation of nation-states based on shared languages such as French, Spanish & German . For example, in France, french language replaced several local dialects such as Gascon, Breton etc. & as a consequence, tensions between such communities speaking various dialects also subsided. One theme to notice here is that as much as a new technology leads to decentralisation & variety on one certain axis ( religious ideas), it leads to harmonisation & centralisation on another separate axis( language & city states).
Latin was language of Church. However , readers of Latin were elite & limited in numbers. Hence, for founders of printing press, latin was not the most suitable language. The first published books were indeed in Latin & were often religious texts. However, within 50 years, the vernaculars composed almost 1/4th of books published in Europe. By 1650’s, majority books were in vernaculars. The new technology often does mimic in first few versions what it intends to replace. Even on internet, the first major use case was around blogs/newspapers & completely resembled newspaper structures.
The printing press was a powerful one to many knowledge diffusion technology. Unlike Internet which is many to many. However, there are many parallels to draw between early days of printing press & internet.
Copyright & Intellectual Property :- Since copying content become cheap, publishing popular works without author’s content was rampant. To counter such harmful practices & to ensure publishers & writers sole authority over original content produced, the concept of copyright & Intellectual Property emerged.
Science Impact:- The printing led to information accumulation & hence saved it from vagaries of decay. For various intellectual pursuits- starting from science to anatomy to astronomy - now range of previously collected data was available & individuals could build on top of work done earlier. This led to accumulation & feedback of scientific & observatory data over time.
Ageism:- Before printing, elders were considered the true source of wisdom. Since there was limited way of documenting learning from earlier generations in local populace & oral traditions were commonplace, age was a powerful indicator of knowledge.
With printing press, books documenting knowledge from all & previous well known writers such - Virgil, Aristotle, Julies Caesar were available in plenty. Why would you sit down with & listen to older generation, when you had access to plethora of knowledge - both way wider in variety & higher in quality.
Printing Press & The Internet
The similarities between Printing press & internet abound.
If you went back to 1990 & asked about the possible future ahead & technologies that will drive it, it is unlikely that people will mention “Internet” as paying any major role- may be flying cars or Robots instead would be the major answer. Similarly, printing press was not the most sought after invention of the time in the active imagine of population.
The incumbents( Churches & Large Enterprises) did not anticipate the disruption Printing press would cause to their power & how it would become a major driving force that upended social & cultural aspects.
The Printing press gave rise to entrepreneurs setting up shops in masses- quite a lot of them failing to succeed though- very similar to the Start-up culture of today.
More number of books were printed post 50 years since the printing press invention than in the combined books produced by scribes in 1000 years prior. Similarly on internet, 90% of data is generated in last 2 years. In addition, It is estimated that in the year 1986 less than 1% of the world's technological capacity to store information was digital and in 2007 it was already 94%. The year 2002 is assumed to be the year when humankind was able to store more information in digital than in analog format.
The printing press led to a major decentralisation of voice. The scribes were not the only medium of expressing ides & opinions in post printing press world. Similarly, with internet, it was not just editors & journalists with the opportunity to be heard. Now, anyone could become a publisher with a click of a button within 140 characters & anyone could read it.
The people working with printing press wore aprons - instead of hoodies as worn by scribes & were espoused a different culture altogether. Ironically, in start-up culture of today, hoodie is more prominently visible across campuses.
Earlier scribe culture was rooted in monastic life. The entrepreneurs behind printing presses though were driven by motivation of Profits & would publish whatever that would sell. In simple terms, all type of content that indicated potential sell & engagement - conspiracy theories, erotic arts, magic spells, recipes.
The rise of publishing & writing birthed the first cohort of celebrities. Writers, poets all capitalised on the fame & actively competed for it.
Polarisation & Filter Bubbles
The adverse impact of internet has been a consistent theme in modern society . Below are few well known :-
The impact on memory since it’s all online so why bother memorise anything?
Facebook & gaming made the difference between real life friends & virtual ones difficult to differentiate.
Our attention span lasts as long as 140 characters & we are subsumed by devices all the time.
The plethora of information available on our fingertips has made us more distracted & paralysed than empowered.
Broader impact on democracy in general - since the ease of personalisation is leading to more & more filter bubbles.Thus, rise in intolerance for the other view point & more data points to confirm to existing beliefs. Internet instead being the harbinger of democracy & open society around the autocratic world has instead become propagator of misinformation & propaganda by existing power structures.
Here are a few excerpts from the older times of Printing Press :-
Socrates warned that writing things down would cause forgetfulness in leaner’s soul, because they will not use their memories.
At the height of printing press revolution in Venice, one friar infamously asked for ban on printing saying - “the pen is a virgin, the printing press is a whore”.
Swiss scientist Gesned complained that printing press was leading to information overload that was more “confusing & harmful”.
As we will see again in further articles that similar sort of concerns accompanied other major information technologies such as Radio, Newspaper & TV. However, with benefit of hindsight we can conclude that each such technology was a force for good & had an overall democratising effect on the world.
Even though all major information disseminating technologies started out as tools for existing powerful institutions (Churches) , it eventually led to lasting changes beyond the control of existing power structures. Printing press, for example, in start used to produce more copies of bible & Church was using it to create uniform copy of varied scribe texts. However, soon the same technology produced atheist & otherwise considered heretical texts.
Fake News/Conspiracy Theories
Since, publishers wanted to sell as much as they could , all types of conspiracy theories related books found its niche audience among the masses.
Loss of Jobs
Scribes as employment category gradually vanished. In addition, “Town/Official criers”- responsible for communicating important news & information such as Royal pronouncements through the centre of town to the masses became obsolete gradually.
First & Second order effects
While the intended outcomes or first order effects of new technologies are relatively easier to imagine, it is the second order effect that has profound impact & extreme unpredictability. Below are few second order effects of printing press as technology.
More books & reading led to higher literacy rates.
Due to increased reading habits, eyeglass industry arose. The consequent work on lens making eventually made Telescope possible. Thus, the religious view of cosmology disappeared.
It can be argued that mass market nature of book publishing led to foundation of nation states. A nation state is a “imagined political entity” & is part of Human’s believing in Myths narrative encapsulated in Sapiens.
Renaissance:- In the middle ages, there had been brief periods of interests in art & culture which were disrupted due to more pressing problems such as famine & war . Post printing press, the quatrecento renaissance survived primarily due to printing technology. The Italian renaissance though started out as regional in nature, it spread across Europe due to printing technology.
References
https://classroom.synonym.com/causes-lutheran-reformation-5895.html
Nice reading material. It was really nice to go through the article. Informed may things about middle age printing aspects.