The printing press as an agent of change
by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein · first published 1979
71% recommend29% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Scholarly history of how movable-type printing reshaped European culture, argument, and information control. It is the standard work on the subject and a strong starting point for media history.
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You might find Elizabeth Eisenstein's work of interest: The Printing Press as an Agent of Change I think we might see "Twitter as an Agent of Change" from a future historian. If we have future historians. Oh, here it is, from 2013: https://earlyamericanists.com/2013/04/29/twitter-as-an-agent...…
on “Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)” ↗…Internet, the WWW (versions 1.0, 2.0, and mobile), etc., in political and social matters is absolutely profound. And often quite unexpected at least by the initial creators. Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is one introduction to this, though there are many others. I'm going through Robert W. McChesney's work presently.
on “Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created” ↗…manuscripts were better. Certainly, the Church didn't like losing control over information, but even it recognized that the technology was superior and could serve its own ends (see Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change for more about this, as well as the impact of printing on many aspects of society) - Illuminated manuscripts held on through the early 1600s (see http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/medieval/browse....).…
on “Memo From the Monastery” ↗Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as An Agent of Change (1979) is the classic work on this. It's the kind of book that book historians of the present often poke holes in, but the fact that people still argue with it is a testament to how good it is. It tackles…
on “The power of Luther’s printing press” ↗…so. There's also a website devoted to his writings, highly recommended. 3. Changes in media and communications have profound influences on society, and always have. Look up Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1980). Her "Preliminary Report" (1968) is much shorter and gives the general spirit of the argument: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/240164 (Full text available via http://sci-hub.cc)…
on “‘What Do You Think Is the Most Important Problem Facing This Country Today?’” ↗…dramatic changes to social structures and systems due to changes in media and epistemic is older than history itself -- it was one of those changes (writing) which started history. Elisabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, and Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, particularly address this.
on “Social media bubbles may threaten democracy” ↗…reassess that premise as it seems to me that every communications revolution, dating to speech itself, has had profound and often highly disruptive effects. Elizabeth Eisenstein captures some of that in The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. The role of cheap press, radio, audio tape, microphones and public address, photoreproduction, and cinema in the rise and spread of fascism is another hugely instructive episode. DeLong expresses awareness…
on “Cost of iPhone X in 1957” ↗The notion that media change society has been most compellingly been explored in Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979), itself strongly inspired by Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy. https://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of... The impact really cannot be overstated, though it's often…
on “19th Century Moral Panic Over Paper Technology (2017)” ↗You'd probably want to read a treatment of the history of infrmation. Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is a good (if long) start. https://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of... But church, or rather, Church, as power centre is very well established. The Roman Catholic Church thrugh…
on “Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)” ↗…changes around them, they do rather less adapting to human culture. (I've become aware in the past five years or so of the study of media and its impacts on society as a whole. Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change only hints at the full breadth, but is one of the major works on the topic. She draws heavily on Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy (literally: we live in the universe Johannes Gutenberg created),…
on “Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust” ↗…Broadly the book is a critic of historicist theories of Plato and Marx. There is also good philosophy on essentialism and the futility of getting closer to the truth by defining things more precisely. 3. Printing Press as an agent of change by Elizabeth Eisenstein. This account of the impact of the printing press on Europe is very long but worth it. The parts on the scientific revolution are particularly good.
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2022 and recommend for 2023” ↗…"Introduction to Communication Science" by MOOC ICS, a fast-paced but solid introduction to the field of communication science. The segments are brief but well-produced and relevant. Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is very strongly recommended on this topic. http://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of-... Her paper, "Some Conjectures about the Impace of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A…
on “The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism” ↗…within organisms developing, and allowing the creation of complex body plans, and not merely single-celled organisms or masses or colonies of cells. For media, see especially Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change and Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy. The link between mass media and totalitarian, fascist, authoritarion, and nationalist sentiments has long been observed (Hannah Arendt, Dwight MacDonald,…
on “Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14” ↗…become the current socio-cultural environment. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42688251> Books on the impact of media and society are also worth considering. Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Eisenstein#The_Print...>, as well as earlier works by McLuhan, Harold Innis, and Walter J. Ong. I'm increasingly convinced that changes to information technology…
on “Why Twitter is such a big deal (2009)” ↗It took about 150 years after invention before printing really took off in terms of how it changed the way people argued (which was critical to the early founders of the US - see "The Printing Press as an Agent of Change) - https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-printing-press-as-an-agent-...
on “Trump wins presidency for second time” ↗