Eisenstein also mentions an emphasis on images as well as text. This TED talk has a pretty good quick-history-of-images-in-relation-to-technology at different times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXYckRgsdjI (skip to 10 mins in). Eisenstein says the book created images and text to be published far and wide. The TED talk mentions the way we relate to, and read images is affected by the context in which it’s housed. If it’s on a pillar you read it in a spiral pattern, if you read it on a wall you read it left to right, right to left, left to right. Since images were placed in books you read it in the same way you read text. This could affect the way we think about story structure. We have a linear story going from left to read, starting at point A and ending at B. We don’t see a movement away from this structure until after the enlightenment.

“As self-serving publicists, early printers issued book lists, circulars, and broadsides. They put their firm’s name, emblem, and shop address on the front page of their books. Indeed, their use of title pages entailed a significant reversal of scribal procedures; they put themselves first. Scribal colophons had come last.”

The eminence of the printer in each publication is a big difference from the scribal culture which came before. It may be said, in this case, that scribes tried their best to make themselves invisible, putting the only indicator at the very end. Each work was meant to be somehow self-existing. Immediacy was valued in this sense. In print culture, however, it seems there was a quick shift to just the opposite. The fact that a work was printed at a particular place was highlighted for the reader at the very beginning. Hypermediacy, at least in this sense, became more valued. The production of the piece was evident right from the beginning, much like “making of” special features on video today.

In this new state of hypermediacy, it becomes easy to see how a printer might begin to take ownership of the works they print. Perhaps this is where the concept of copyright came from? It is possible this was covered in one of the later chapters of the book–and it is understandable if it was not covered at all given the conceptual nature of the study–but it is certainly an interesting topic to consider. Given the nature of printed books being the first mass-distributed copied material, it seems obvious that this issue must have emerged to some extent. Reflections on the originations of copyright (and similar topics) may shed light on the validity of current matters on the subject.

Can ‘The Printed Blog’ Succeed with Blogs in Newspaper Form?

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/02/can-the-printed-blog-succeed-with-blogs-in-newspaper-form040.html

Ultimately, though, I would say that she is not deserving of the techno-determinist label that some critics have apparently granted her. She (for the most part) aptly balances gains and losses in her consideration of the printing press as _an_ (not _the_) agent of age in early modern Europe. Many times, she reminds the reader that “one must be wary of overestimating as well as underestimating the advantages of the new technology” (25). How applicable is this advice in our current cultural moment? She writes, “all revolutions have preconditions as well as precipitants” (339). This passage speaks to her attempt at both diachronic and synchronic analysis. In this way, Eisenstein can detail both the pace of the change as well as the far-reaching aspects of the change. “It was not a ‘slow revolution’ but a remarkably rapid one [and] it was also remarkably widespread” (318). She tries here to enforce her thesis that the printing press was not simply part of a causal nexus—it refigured the nexus itself (308).

I was overall very impressed with the way she handled the numerous paradoxes that arose throughout her examination. For example, the paradox of urban populations divided across realms yet linked through the new network of communication (107). I was also interested in her perspective on the supposedly closed and silent nature of printed products, which I believe Ong points out (books are closed, but oral dialogues are open). Eisenstein seems to reinvent that notion by saying about oral culture: “the notion of a closed sphere or single corpus, passed down from generation to generation, was replaced by the new idea of an open-ended investigatory process pressing against ever-advancing frontiers” (290). Also, drawing from the writings of Thomas Jefferson, Eisenstein makes a case for the revisionary nature of print, since copies of texts could appear in successive editions. This is certainly not the instantaneous update process of Wikipedia, but it does make me re-evaluate the book as a supposedly silent tomb of information.

I found it interesting that Eisenstein marks printing culture (and not the scribble or writing cultures) the origin of “authorship.” She argues that prior to printing press, texts were copied in limited numbers, authors were mainly monastery scribes, and information was mainly collective. The fixity and dissemination of publications encouraged and introduced the idea of authorship, and afterward the “capitalist spirit” made authorship profitable. At times I wonder if she is critical and negative towards the new form of “authorship,” and if she uses the term to refer to individualism or desire for literally property rights and cultural/economical benefits, rather than to refer to an originator or a creator.

As printing press made textual and pictorial statements permanent and mass published, different readers were able to view an exact pictorial print simultaneously at multiple locations. Eisenstein identifies this phenomenon as “communication revolution” rather than “visual communication revolution.” I find the latter more appropriate as printing press was “far from reducing the importance of images” (p40), and it laid the foundation for graphic design: a combination of text and graphics that visually communicate a message. Unfortunately, Eisenstein discretely (and only on few occasions) talks about rapidly developing non-phonetic communication methods and the evolution of typography in the 15th century Europe, and primarily focuses on written and textual communication. Later, when she explains the authors’ rights in regards to patenting, “the right to publish,” and piracy (p94), I am not clear whether these rights applied solely to the authors and inventors or they applied to the visual artists as well.

Once the printing press was invented, there was a rise in the sale of paper due to this invention but has the production and sale of paper seen its peek since the invention of the computer? Computers are eliminating the need for paper with emails, e-books and online news. It is interesting how one invention can impact the use of another invention and society in general. Last year the United States Post Office delivered approximately 9 billion less items than in the year before. The United States Post Office is now considering delivering mail five days a week instead of its current six days a week. Could this be a reduction in the number of letters sent due to the increased use of e-mails for letters and advertisements? It would be interesting to know how many people purchased e-books last year instead of paper books.