By Dr. David W. BullaFor educational purposes only.
COMM 2010A: MEDIA LITERACYSPRING 2020
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 22., UNIVERSITY HALL 248, 11 A.M.AUGUSTA UNIVERSITY
DEPT. OF COMMUNICATION
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Third Week
https://datelineaugjag.wordpress.com/comm2010-fall-2017/
QUOTE OF THE DAY“The odd thing is that it [an existing original Gutenberg Bible] doesn’t feel like something that’s going to crumble to dust if I turn the pages too fast. It feels very solid and robust, and after all it was made to be used several times a day. If it was bought by a monastery, it would have been used for all the offices of the day. It was a solid object. A Bible was a thing that people expected to turn to all the time. And it isn’t a fragile little thing like an ornament. It’s a useful object. And the extraordinary thing is … every page is the same …[This was] mass production for the first time.”
—Stephen Fry
Wm. Cullen Bryant
Today in 2010A1. McLuhan: Technological Determinism.2. Three major communication
breakthroughs: (1) Writing; (2) the hand press; and (3) the telegraph.
3. Gutenberg’s revolution. 4. Stephen Fry video (excerpt).5. Gutenberg haiku.
PERSPECTIVE
§ How long has the press been around?
TIMELINE§ 15 billion year ago, the Big Bang§ 12 billions years ago, Milky Way comes into existence§ 5 billion years ago, sun and planets bursts on the scene§ 1 billion years ago, algae first appears§ 390 million years ago, the sharks§ 250 million years ago, dinosaurs§ 40 million years ago, cows§ 3 million years ago, humanoids§ 700,000 years ago, fire§ Cave paintings, 40,000 years ago§ 6,000 years ago, cities§ 2,000 years ago, paper§ 500 years ago, printing press§ 200 years ago, First Amendment § 50 years ago, the Internet
THREE GREAT COMM. INVENTIONS
• Writing• Printing Press• Telegraph
Cave paintings in Spain,20,000 years ago
WRITING
SUMERIA, EGYPT, AND CHINAForms of
Writing started in three different parts of the world approxi-mately4,000 years ago: Sumeria(Iraq), Egypt, and China
Egypt SumeriaChina
FIRST: SOME THEORY• What to make of these inventions—from
writing to the telegraph?• How to put it all together?• We look to Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian
literature professor.
Technological determinism
• Marshall McLuhan’s great contribution to communication theory
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MCLUHAN• Technology (medium or platform) is the
message. That is, movable-type printing press itself more important than any one document created by it.
• Technological determinism: Every communication invention brings a whole new set of advantages.
• Old technology does not necessarily disappear. If it is to survive, it must re-invent itself.
McLuhan
Technological determinism
• Social, political, and economic change is the inevitable result of changes in technology.
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Gutenberg• Let’s go back 500 years …• Before the telegraph, it was the
movable-type printing press that brought in an Age of Literacy, which is still going strong
• McLuhan: Printing press is the key to modern consciousness; it gave us the global village
• Rise of literacy—information for all• Reading and writing: Communication
unlocks potential and power13
Gutenbergstatue
in Vienna
Johannes Gutenberg• Before JG, texts were produced by scribes (monks)—
work worked in the cold and the dark. They had hand cramps, arthritis, eye problems, neck problems. Fine motors skills were critical.
• Yes, the Chinese had invented a wooden block press by 600 A.D. and the Koreans had movable metal type by 1300 A.D.
• But Gutenberg one two steps further: (1) Metal type from lead molds (instead of wood), the punch, thus establishing type foundries. (2) Korean press was for the elites; Gutenberg’s wanted to make money, so the idea was mass production of books—to feed the Church, the merchant class, and the growing universities.
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Monastic scriptorium
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AbbeyHexham, England
Gutenberg• His pilot printing project were a Latin grammar book and
Church fund-raising literature. Then came the Bible.• The first Gutenberg Bible appeared in 1455 or 1456 in
Mainz, Germany (on the Rhine). Each page was 42 lines long.
• By the end of the 15th Century, printing using a version of his press was occurring in 12 European countries.
• By the end of the century, some 20 million books had been produced—some 7,000 titles in all.
• The British library holds every book every written in English—14 miles of book shelves underground, some 3 million new books each year. (Dr. van Tuyll and I both have our books in there somewhere.)
• This was the first Internet—the mass production of text, in what we now call hard copy.
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Gutenberg Bible: Library of Congress
17Vulgate Bible printed in Latin
Impact• Gutenberg only wanted to print the Bible, and, of
course, with all text, no artwork. That will come centuries later.
• But the other printers of the first wave printed all kinds of texts. The Church even saw its advantages of its scribes.
• Knowledge would be diffused to more and more people; more ideas would come out of the existing ideas about how to understand the world we live in, how to do business, how to make things, etc. …
• Literacy expanded rapidly. • The rise of Protestantism is directly related to
Gutenberg’s invention, as Protestants put an emphasis on individual reading and interpretation of the Bible. 18
Big differences• Reliability.• Producing the same text over and over again.• Flexibility: The ability to print entirely different
lines of text. • Preservation that stood the test of time and also
was always the same. • Books-–and other printed-–material began the
industrial revolution, as they were the first mass produced innovations.
• It ended the dominance of the oral tradition, especially the power of the pulpit.
• And here came the likes of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, et al. 19
Gutenberg borrows from his world:The wine press
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Mainz is on the Rhine,and it’s in wine country
Stephen Fryon Gutenberg
• We don’t really know what the Gutenberg press looks like; there is no existing Gutenberg press or drawings of it.
• Based on the wine press. Here is perfect McLuhan theory in action: One machine is used to make another machine—and change the world.
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Danse Macabre
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First drawing of a printing press, by Albrecht Durer—circa 1500 A.D.
(Princeton University)
Stephen Fryon Gutenberg
• The key ingredients: Paper, ink, line holder (a form), type, slider, platen, massive screw, supporting structure with legs.
• The type can be re-arranged on each form. • Printed one page at a time. • Each form—line—can be made into next text
patterns.• Simple, but what a marvelous machine. • The tool of the First Information Age.
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Stephen Fryon Gutenberg
• Paper. Very important for the whole enterprise.• This is where Gutenberg was really lucky.• Velum, the paper of the day, was too expensive and
required the wholesale slaughter of calves.• But in Basel, Switzerland, the West was about to get
the same great paper the Chinese had invented 1,500 years before.
• This was paper made from cloth rags, as opposed to wood pulp (the preferred method today).
• The process was slow.• But not as slow as making velum from calf skin. 24
Fry on Gutenberg• The first press was a cooperative effort.• Gutenberg was a a blacksmith and a
businessman. He also was university educated.
• He needed venture capital behind him, so he elicited the help of three bankers, one named Fust.
• And a carpenter to make the machine and then men top operate it—who would come to be known as printer’s devils.
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Gutenberg• Mainz had seen better days, so Gutenberg took
his invention to Strasburg, which was more of a financial center and a larger city.
• But Mainz was key for Gutenberg; there he saw the way books had been made—by monk scribes in the medieval Church, in scriptoria.
• Also, this was at the time that universities were flourishing in Europe. The printing press would help build a book-based educational system. 26
Gutenberg• So the printing press effectively ended the reign
of one type of communication technology: the printing of the scribes, monk’s in the Catholic Church who wrote down everything—the Bible and all of the transactions of the church.
• The printing press could do all of that much more efficiently, much more reliably, and in far greater numbers.
• Just as the telegraph three centuries later would move information over long distances and instanteously, and thus end the long run of the pony express, the ships, the trains, and the other analog transportative communication models. 27
Gutenberg Bibles• Only 49 Gutenberg Bibles left in the world.• One is at the Library of Congress.• One at the Lilly Library at Indiana University.
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Gutenberg Haiku• In response to the previous questions, write a
haiku response.• Three lines.• Five syllables.• Seven syllables.• Five syllables. 29
Medium is the message
• Is the technology more important than the content?
• Was the book itself more important than the content of the books?
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CambridgeUniversity
Libraryhouses
an original Gutenberg Bible
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