The Gutenberg Age, named after the 15th-century inventor of the printing press, revolutionised the public realm, enabling mass production for print. Among the many positive changes resulting was a freedom of speech not previously known, yet – as Jeff Jarvis’ thoughtful history, The Gutenberg Parenthesis, outlines – objections remained rife. Like the digital world of today, the new world of print technology was chaotic at the beginning: issues of censorship, and banning of certain content, proliferated.
The Gutenberg Parenthesis traces the history of a medium which shaped culture for five centuries; thereafter, the present digital age, with Jarvis suggesting that content has lost its value due to its abundance on the internet, and considerably harder to manage. Is it possible, he asks, that we are seeing a return to a time when conversation was more important than what was written in print, and that writing’s authorship and ownership?
Certainly, our transition out of the print world and into a digital one remains open to much debate; The Gutenberg Parenthesis considers what lessons might be learned from our dedication to print and the age of it, to a society that might be more concerned with conversation and less concerned with mass media and the validity of print.
The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age Of Print And Its Lessons For The Age Of The Internet, Jeff Jarvis (Bloomsbury)
Price: £20/£18 Ebook. Info: here
words EMILY EDWARDS