Why choose 1495? Because we’re about the same distance into our revolution, the one kicked off by digital technology and networking. Printing shaped and transformed societies over the next four centuries, but nobody in Mainz (Gutenberg’s home town) in, say, 1495 could have known that his technology would (among other things): fuel the Reformation and undermine the authority of the mighty Catholic church enable the rise of what we now recognise as modern science create unheard-of professions and industries change the shape of our brains and even recalibrate our conceptions of childhood. Hindsight is the only exact science in this business, and in that long run we’re all dead. And the problem with living through a revolution is that it’s impossible to take the long view of what’s happening. W e’re living through the most profound transformation in our information environment since Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of printing in circa 1439.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |