Printing Culture - Case Study Example

Printing Culture Number] Printing Culture Historical records indicate that the world has gone through significant developmentsand revolutions in the past few centuries. One of the most important aspects of these revolutions was the development of basic printing machines which changed the entire concept of acquiring education and general literacy. It impacted business, political, social and economic procedures through increasing their effectiveness and efficiency. Subsequently the culture of print and manuscripts emerged in the urban and rural areas which were driven by the increasing audience for books and publishing of different forms of literature. The history of printing media is profound and it has significantly affected the way we perceive and understand scientific knowledge or art. As far as the Western printing culture is concerned then Gutenberg is credited for this innovation. Despite of endless benefits that people gained from printing culture, it was also criticized by some scholars for example, Cook argues about the dangerous elements of Gutenberg’s innovation while on the other hand Eisenstein has termed it as an unacknowledged revolution. Here, it is also important to recognize that the massive technological developments which took place in 1980s impacted the printing culture to a greater extent, for instance, the online availability of books and academic articles decreased the demand for books printed on papers. Printing is defined as multiplying images, copying texts and motifs on the designed and marked surfaces while maintaining a contact with matrix of printing. The printing practices have transformed over the time and therefore they facilitate in distinguishing different historical periods from one another (Robertson, Marked Surfaces, 2013). Officially printing culture was developed in fifteenth century but it was not adopted immediately rather in the beginning it was considered as a complicated innovation. Hence the early scholars of arts and science concluded that it is difficult to explain the impacts of printing culture in a short declaration which may mislead people. However, Eisenstein conducted several studies on this subject and according to her analysis printing culture played a significant role in developing Europe while shifting it from the culture of images to the culture of words (Eisenstein, The Emergence of Print Culture in the West, 1980). On the other side Victorians also contributed to further enrich printing as these people were enthusiastic to initiate the good work (Robertson, Steam Intellects, 2013). Eisenstein’s research is accepted and confirmed by other historians as well. Frances Yates explained that enabled us to store text in a more reliable format while decreasing the need of images as the basic method of acquiring knowledge. However, if we study printing history as a mere shift from images to words then it would not be comprehensive and profound. The impacts of printing culture over the formal schooling system and information management have continuously increased. Although the impacts have been uneven over the timeline but there was actually no point in history where the role printing began to diminish rather evidences prove that it has been enlarging its scope until today (Eisenstein, The Emergence of Print Culture in the West, 1980). There is an interesting distinction between the printing procedures used in Korea and Europe. In the early stages, it was actually done through the use of movable letters made from the stamps of book-spine. These used to have both alphabetic and discrete functions as invented by Gutenberg. This particular form of printing was different from the procedures followed in Korea, China and Japan (Kittler, 1996). These countries had the printing culture ever since seventh century. It was commonly called as block printing in which a carved woodblock was used to print pages with particular texts. The idea of block printing was appropriate for Chinese and Japanese cultures as they used to have ideograms instead of alphabets and letters (Briggs, 2009). But Europeans needed to develop something different for printing alphabets. Winston states in his book that initially books were manufactured using four to six presses in which the production rate per hour was about 8 to 16 impressions. Furthermore, 12 printers and 6 compositors would take nearly a year to complete 180 copies of the same text (Winston, 2005). However, this was sufficient for meet the demand of that time. Printing is credited in the history of technology for developing the first assembly line which actually potentiated the capacity of books and data processing. In contrast to the manual copies, all the printed books of an edition had same texts, engravings and woodcuts. Moreover, these were first time accessed through unified alphabetical indexes. Subsequently, communication system was given a reference base by the use of titles and page numbers whereas on the other hand the book illustrations gave rise to the fundamentals of engineering in this field (Kittler, 1996). Thus the role of printing in arts and literature increased as it started to contribute in the performance of rhetorical music at different tournaments, fictions and literature of authors. The idea of reading which was primarily attributed to elite was no longer considered a privilege rather it smoothed the path for democracy through imposing the compulsion of general literacy and schooling (Kittler, 1996). Printing as a technological innovation was challenged by the development of computer technology in twentieth century which gave rise to uncertainties regarding its revolutionary impact on reading. This is primarily because of the fact that the electronic revolution was significantly fast and gained ever increasing acceptance in households and corporations. Watson, the chairman of IBM in 1943, was confident about his computers business and the fulfillment of his expectations can be easily observed today (Lyons, 1999). Furthermore, the transformation of the entire printing process through which people used to consume text was changed evidently. Researchers have argued that computerization enforced a different style of reading which is mostly described as browsing. Therefore it would be unjust to compare printing culture with the electronic reading as the latter it fundamentally used for exploring internet rather than for the purpose of acquiring knowledge (Lyons, 1999). Based upon this argument is can be safely said that the reader of 1998 Western world was more like a surfer of words who would mostly indulge in to zapping from one text to another while extracting his required information. Here, it should also be noticed that today our routine allows a very short time for actual reading which is also seized between our work, home, interests, sleep, travel, lunch breaks etc. (Lyons, 1999). Hence there are significant differences between the concept of reading within the printing culture and the age of computerization. Lewis Mumford in his book ‘Art and Technics’ have explained that art is actually an expression of one’s inner feelings without any relation to the media in which it is expressed (Mumford, 2000). He has made a clear emphasis that ‘Art’ particularly the one expressed in the form of words is valuable without the reference of paper or screen reflections. This subsequently concludes that printing and computerization should be dealt individually. In addition to this, the development of new information media which is based upon computerization cannot make the printing media obsolete since both of these have contributed differently at different times in history (Kittler, 1996). People belonging to the ancient civilizations and the medieval era actually underwent major difficulties in order to preserve knowledge that they had. However, with the passage of time this knowledge became more and more corrupted (Eisenstein, The Unacknowledged Revolution, 1997). This is primarily due to increasing immorality and crime in societies which impacts almost all the sectors of human lives. When printing presses were established then the printing media was further developed. This actually helped in greater accumulation of information while encouraging scholars to focus more towards the revision of text rather than looking for the manuscripts. Consequently research work increased all over the world and observations made from wide readership were then included in the later editions of books. Hence Eisenstein has emphasized that printing reversed the entire concept and attitude of people towards learning. Furthermore knowledge became easier to be transferred to the subsequent generations without being corrupted or lessened (Eisenstein E. , The Unacknowledged Revolution, 1997). Cook in his article states that movable printing press invented by Gutenberg was a significant technological revolution which developed a general idea that now information would be easily accessible to the masses. This was actually true to some extent since the print media speed up the process of education and literacy while playing an important role in the revolution of the western civilization (Cook, 2001). Eisenstein further confirms at another place that society and people both were largely impacted by the initiation of printing media (Eisenstein, From a hearing public to a reading public: Some unevenly phased social and pyschological changes, 1979). This evidently proves that printing has transformed over the time while facing significant challenges. It still has the great capacity of protecting knowledge and accumulating different types of information. It helped in changing the mind set of readers from fifteenth century till now. Moreover, it played an important role in changing the Western society and the rest of the world. References Briggs, A. &. (2009). Printing in its contexts. In A social history of the media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (pp. 13-60). UK: Polity. Cook, S. (2001). Technological Revolutions and the Gutenberg Myth. In M. Stefnik, Internet dreams: Archetypes, myths, and metaphors (pp. 67-82). Cambridge: MIT Press. Eisenstein, E. (1979). From a hearing public to a reading public: Some unevenly phased social and pyschological changes. In The printing press as an agent of change: Communications and cultural transformation in early modern Europe (pp. 129-136). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eisenstein, E. (1980). The Emergence of Print Culture in the West. Journal of Communication, 99-106. Eisenstein, E. (1997). The Unacknowledged Revolution. In The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe (pp. 3-42). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kittler, F. (1996). The History of Communication Media. Retrieved Oct 12, 2014, from C Theory. Lyons, M. (1999). The history of reading from Gutenberg to gates. The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms , 50-57. Mumford, L. (2000). Art and technics. . New York: Columbia University Press. Robertson, F. (2013). Marked Surfaces. In Print Culture: From steam press to ebook (pp. 18-36). USA: Routledge. Robertson, F. (2013). Steam Intellects. In Print culture: From steam press to ebook (pp. 37-57). New York: Routledge. Winston, B. (2005). The Liberty to Know? Printing Press from 1455. In Messages: Free Expression, Media and the West from Gutenberg to Google (pp. 3-30). USA: Routledge. Read More