Printing Press Evolution over the years
We live in a generation where we use technology in our everyday lives. Not only are we constantly on our computers working, calling our friends at the tip of our fingers, going onto an app to get a ride home, it is essential for us. Since the majority of us have phones, laptops, tablets, some of us forget how much technology helps us. Between writing notes for class on my laptop or making a grocery list on my phone, it is so simple and easy and I don’t even think about doing it anymore. We now see it as an everyday life, and without the evolution of the printing press, we would still be writing everything down on paper or trying out hardest to remember everything.
When reading Media Evolution and Cultural Change, an article written by Joshua Meyrowitz, he talks about “Four Eras”. Traditional oral cultures, the transitional scribal phase, the modern print culture, and the postmodern global electronic culture. Meyrowitz explains how the ongoing process of the printing press has grown from just speaking to being able to make any print needed at the touch of a button. In the beginning, during the traditional oral cultures, their two ways of communicating were from sound and speech, mostly through song, dance, and rituals. It then progressed to the transitional scribal phase. They still took up mostly sound and speech, but this is where they started to truly introduce the printing press. People could start to read and write, this caused books to be made and the introduction of pictographic writing systems (where each object or idea has its own meaning) and phonetic systems (where meaningless symbols represent a sound). When modern print culture took over, there was the creation of the television, radios, and newspaper which helped everyone communicate without having to be in person with someone. You were able to print something over and over without having to write everything, it saved time and was quick and easy money. Lastly, in the postmodern global electronic culture, you were able to communicate a great distance away at the speed of light. You could make thousands of copies of something in one day, it really helped the progress of where we are now and being able to type anything you want, at any time, and able to print in minutes. Social media has expanded throughout the years and is now a part of everyday use.
The transition from the Oral Society to the Scribal/Civilizing Phase was something that not everyone thought could happen. In the oral society, nothing was written down. Everything was from memory, which is why the elder were seen as superior — they were the only thing that we could rely on for past events. They would communicate by rhyming (they could easily remember rhymes rather than just talking) or by singing songs. They could not write anything down. Going from the oral society to scribal phase was extremely hard and not everyone could do it. It was mostly for religion based people. You had to be part of a religion in order to read / write, and this caused religion to spike and be more common. In the movie, when they first starting writing, it was usually monks who would be writing books within the churches. They took a great deal of time and effort to make one book, and now it is sacred towards the religion and will never be forgotten. Around that time, they went through the “black death” which killed hundreds. This caused a great deal of money to be passed down and an economic boost to occur. This allowed people to move where the money was and build roads to help travel. That then lead to more churches being built, cities to be built, education to begin and a new era to be introduced.
The world has evolved from just talking to people to being able to send them a text within minutes. We are not the way we used to be, technology has improved and in order to survive you need to keep up with it. We will only keep on evolving and progressing to better ways to use the technology around us. We would not be where we are now without the start of the printing press. It is unimaginable what life would be like if we never changed era’s and just kept things the way they were.
