FollowI’m rereading Chapter 5 of Elizabeth Eisenstein’s The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, the abridged (and illustrated) version of her classic two-volume study of the printing press. I’ve always been struck by the way in which printing–mass distribution—helped to foment revolutionary thought during the Reformation. Eisenstein calls it a “movement that was shaped at the very outset (and in large part ushered in) by the new powers of the press (page 148).” And she points out that between 1517 and 1520, Luther’s 30 publications sold more than 300,000 copies. More generally, making new ideas accessible pretty clearly promoted individual learning and individual critical thought.
But Eisenstein argues that the ability to create fixed and uniform copies of books was counter-revolutionary as well. Printing identical copies makes for authorized texts and authorized ideas, religious and otherwise. These authorized texts get preserved, canonized and studied. So making ideas fixed subverted individuality.
What’s striking about the tension that Eisenstein documents is the likelihood that it has been repeated by other media technologies (newspapers, radio, movies, television) and is being repeated now by the internet and social media tools. Big new ideas spread quickly. But do they soon settle down to conventional wisdom? Are search and social media both creating revolution (think North Africa and Wikileaks) and conformity (think groupthink, repurposed content, and unsearchable ideas)?
