The Printing Press

Through the years we have seen an amazing array of innovative, highly creative communication tools be invented and introduced to society. Each one, some more than others, have helped advance our ability to connect with each other faster and more easily. The telegraph, the telephone, the fax machine, the photocopy machine and computers are just a few examples of remarkable innovations that have enhanced the act of communication.  A world without these and the entire family of communication tools would be a world less connected populated by peoples with less knowledge and/or awareness of each other. It would be a world of greater isolation.

One so-called communication tool that was particularly key to our global connectivity is the printing press. Johannes Gutenberg is credited with inventing this  machine with metal movable type nearly 560 years ago. One great and obvious benefit to this invention is the fact it gave man the ability to produce books on a massive and comparative rapid scale. Given up till that time, books or manuscripts of information had largely been produced by hand, to say the printing press was a big deal would - and continues to be - a giant understatement. But in addition to this mechanical benefit, the printing press brought with it another equally-significant change.

Before the printing press, information was in the hands of a relatively few: religious and political leaders. Their positions in society were made even powerful because they had a virtual monopoly in information. With the arrival of the printing press, that advantage disappeared. Suddenly, information and access to it became much more decentralized. The so-called average person could now expand their base of knowledge and know as much as their leaders. In one key way, at least, this put the two on equal footing and added an important element of democracy to mankind. Interestingly, it is the question of access to information that has helped characterize the various forms of government we have seen in the history of the world.