{"id":106,"date":"2008-12-22T21:29:18","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T05:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/?page_id=106"},"modified":"2009-01-01T22:41:37","modified_gmt":"2009-01-02T06:41:37","slug":"not-the-gutenberg-press","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/?page_id=106","title":{"rendered":"Not the Gutenberg Press"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Gutenberg printing press was a great advancement of existing technology.<br \/>\nIt is very important. I don&#8217;t want to write it off but it&#8217;s been overdone and<br \/>\nmisunderstood. It is important to realize that the book already existed and,<br \/>\nof course, the written word as a means of communication already existed. As we<br \/>\nmove from book technology to digitally printed and displayed technology, we<br \/>\nare not overcoming 500 years of book culture, we are overcoming over 2,000 years<br \/>\nof this technology. I should point out here that the digital cobbler project<br \/>\nis not about denigrating books or trying to minimize their current importance<br \/>\nand utility. Book production is still tremendously high and is still the <em>only<\/em><br \/>\nmeans of transferring recorded information in many parts of the world. Even<br \/>\nin our part of the world where digital technology is readily available books<br \/>\nare an essential part of our entire information infrastructure and we should<br \/>\nexpect to take much more than a generation for them to be replaced. I am not<br \/>\nblind to the fact that much of the research during this project was accomplished<br \/>\nthrough reading printed books.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In brief, it is certainly the case that the availability of books grew tremendously<br \/>\nas printing presses proliferated into the 16th century. By the early 1500s,<br \/>\na learned gentleman could amass a personal library of over 1000 books. This<br \/>\nwould have been economically impossible only 50 years earlier. This explosion<br \/>\nof printed information, it has been argued, did lead to the rise of modern mathematics<br \/>\nand made the industrial age possible. (Information Ages, pp 100-115).<\/p>\n<p>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, there&#8217;s lots more to say on this subject. <em>This is just the beginning.<\/em><br \/>\nBut I believe the best way to learn more about living in our own digital environments<br \/>\nand to learn more from the history of technology is from each other and that&#8217;s<br \/>\nwhat blogs are for.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The [original]<strong> Digital Cobbler<\/strong> blog has more about the history of science, technology, and information and about the digital environments we live in.   Check it out!\u00c2\u00a0 [Note: the <em>original <\/em>Digital Cobbler forum &amp; blog started in 2001 was about these things but it&#8217;s gone and the new one is about&#8230;. well&#8230; you can <a href=\"http:\/\/digitalcobbler.com\">check it out<\/a> and see. PH.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Gutenberg printing press was a great advancement of existing technology. It is very important. I don&#8217;t want to write it off but it&#8217;s been overdone and misunderstood. It is important to realize that the book already existed and, of course, the written word as a means of communication already existed. As we move from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":27,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"withoutbars.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-106","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106\/revisions\/194"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}