One of the alleged blessings of the invention of the ‘movable type’ printing press is that it meant the written word no longer had to be written by the shaky hands of bored monks, and at their leisure. The printing press gave us the ability to accurately mass produce literature, making important works of the time accessible to ‘regular folks’. The internets have unleashed a similar opportunity by making ideas accessible to people who may or may not understand the context of what they are reading. Now, anybody with an opinion is able to make it available to the world, even if it’s totally meatballs.
The limitations of mainstream “science” in the 1400s notwithstanding (“You got ghosts in your blood, and you should do opium about it”), did the sudden availability of legibly and faithfully reproduced works create a spike in crackpot literature & ideas, the likes of which we have to wade through these days, since computers and the interwebs have given a voice to every imbecile and genius in the land? I don’t mean widely held, but wrong (by today’s standards) stuff. I mean stuff that the educated people of the time could look at and roll their eyes at, the way educated professionals today try not to when confronted with an internet researcher.
I think while it was revolutionary and caused a revolution, it still moved slower than we’d have thought, giving society some time to catch up. For example, Gutenberg made his first press in 1452, but the idea took 20 years or more to make it to other countries- for example, the first texts printed in England were in the 1470s. Same thing for Belgium and France. Italy was a bit faster, in 1465, but still thirteen years later.
There was certainly crackpot literature- Copernicus’ “De revolutionibus orbium coelestium” was printed in 1543, and was very likely what at the time, would have been considered crackpot science. I don’t doubt that there were contemporaries publishing wacky and bizarre stuff on other topics, such as alchemy. George Ripley wrote “The Compound of Alchemy; or, the Twelve Gates leading to the Discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone” in 1471- I figure it would have been printed at some point.
My impression is that printed material was at the beginning very expensive and your average man in the street was illiterate and, in any case, could not afford to buy any book. And when he could, the very first thing he would buy was a bible. The rise in literacy and decline in the cost of books was slow. Also governments were quick to censor books and other publications. Eventually you got news sheets and, I suppose, privately printed pamphlets. I suppose the latter were possibly full of lies, but I don’t imagine they could circulate very far or fast.
I have the impression that the printing press is THE key invention that made the modern world eventually possible.
Once it was cheap to copy and store information it would have become evident that there are conflicting theories as to how things work. More books than just Bibles and the writings of Greek philosophers and more readers of those books.
The scientific method is a way to resolve conflicting information in favor of information more probable to be correct.
Further dark ages and regressions are difficult with the printing press because there are many copies of useful knowledge.
Information technology in a way is just an upgraded printing press. Software math packages and today, AI is a way to do many of the arguments that the scientific method involved faster, much faster.
Early printed materials supposedly included bibles, bible commentaries, sermons, and other religious works. as James Burke pointed out in his series The Day the Universe Changed, a lot of printed books brought not just the printed word, but also (relatively) inexpensive woodcut illustrations as well, so the Gutenberg Revolution brought an explosion of illustrations as well as written matter into wide circulation.
Although printed books were cheaper than hand-written manuscripts, they still weren’t exactly “cheap”, and you had a limited number of literates to read them. Of course, the printing press changed this, too, but it took time. I suspect that the expense and literacy standard acted as a barrier to keep out the real “crazies”. You’d have opinionated authors of religious texts, but not Conspiracy Theories. It wasn’t until you had a large body of literate readers and truly inexpensive printed matter that crackpot theories and conspiracies could flourish. I don’t know when that would have been. But the early days of printing wouldn’t have been like the early days of the Internet, or the pre-internet world of High Weirdness by Mail
That’s right, it took time. There weren’t many books to print and it wasn’t miraculously inexpensive overnight either. Eventually philosophy and science became popular which led to tremendously beneficial advances, and plenty of nonsense like astrology and political conspiracy theories and propaganda as well. In addition to the time needed for printing to become more practical there was also time needed for more people to learn how to read.
The internet situation is the same, the more readily available mass communication is, the more readily it gets used by the kooks and nuts and the kind of people they attract.
Look at the Reformation. There were lots of heresies throughout the Middle Ages, but they all got quashed. Luther and Calvin, however, came after the printing press was invented, so their ideas couldn’t be eradicated. The result is Protestantism. Maybe not “crackpot” to you and me, but I guarantee you it was considered so to the vast majority of Europeans in the early-mid 1500s.
I don’t think the Protestant Reformation would have occurred (or, at least, not occurred as quickly) without the invention of the printing press. At the very least, the appearance of bibles in the vernacular was a revolutionary thing.
From the Wiki (the bolded section has no cites, so take it for what it is):
*"The Reformation was a triumph of literacy and the new printing press.[26]**[17][28] Luther’s translation of the Bible into German was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy, and stimulated as well the printing and distribution of religious books and pamphlets. From 1517 onward, religious pamphlets flooded Germany and much of Europe.[29][c]
By 1530, over 10,000 publications are known, with a total of ten million copies." *
If everyone was illiterate, what were they using 10,000,000 copies of religious texts for?
Yes, it did, and in many ways akin to what we are seeing today. I’ve made mention of this many times, here and on Twitter, that our society is very similar in many ways to the post-press European world and is suffering from the same schizophrenia which lead to the Reformation and the Wars of Religion from 1521-1648.
The press allowed, just as social media does today, the creation of information bubbles, where you can “talk” with like-minded people, eventually coming to the surety that all people are similar… and when this bubble bursts, as it did in 1517, as it did in 2016… society tears itself apart as it tries to reconcile the fact that our very neighbors are not like us.
Back then, it was religion - the press just murdered the shit out of a unified Christendom. Today, it’s more unclear, but I think one possible outcome of all this hubbub today may be a re-examining of the idea of the nation state.
Naw, it’s 60 years, 3 generations, and subsequent patterns have held up:
Printing press invented in 1453, Reformation in 1517 (63 years)
High Speed Rotary press invented in 1843, World War 1 in 1914* (71)
Internet 1961, Putin’s Revenge** 2016 (55)
*Not covered, but a third time a technological change in communications lead to world-changing events. The HSR is indirectly responsible for eventually ending Monarchal rule, which is kinda cool
I’m going to third the Protestant Reformation. It’s hard to remember that it wasn’t just some theological squabble, the impact was more like the Civil War, with feudal lords taking on other feudal lords, the shattering of the already-weak Holy Roman Empire (it wasn’t much, but it was the only Empire they had), and varying amounts of violence and rebellion - not only in Germany, but also Austria, Bohemia, Switzerland, Sweden, etc.
And while it’s true that bound books were out of reach for the commoners, pamphlets, fliers and broadsheets were cheap and could be cranked out by the thousands. All it took was one person in a village with reading skills to spread the news.
ETA: There are some references for the 10 million books figure. This one pops up in several articles on the Reformation: Rubin, “Printing and Protestants” Review of Economics and Statistics
The Protestant Reformation is arguably the single-most political event of the past 1,000 years, and it was completely fed by the printing revolution, have no doubt about it. Martin Luther was, among many things, the world’s first media sensation, a literate, well-spoken monk who openly defied the Pope… and got away with it. This was a stunning thing in a believing age, in a world where the Pope isn’t seen as an executive, but as a grand wizard, with the ability to bring down death and destruction among all heretics.
Europe read the Theses, and waited for the Pope’s response… and waited… and waited… and, in time, they realized nothing was going to happen to Luther. Nothing. The spell of medieval Christendom was broken for millions, for the Humanists, the Reformers, the Princes who were forming their nascent nation-states. The Pope became fallible, the Church was now viewed as just another organization, and all hell broke loose for over 130 years as Christian fought Christian because both sides believed that the requirements of the afterlife demanded fidelity to their variant of the faith.
Fuck. And that’s just one not so obvious thing. I was sorta wondering about the fate of science and rational thought going down the tubes except in small pockets where…well just watch Idiocracy. Someone’s still designing airplanes and factories and making television happen for them, so the knowledge and ability won’t evaporate entirely, it will just stop trying to be seen by the masses. Like witches keeping it on the down low in the 1600s. And for the same reasons. Actually I think I can accept that.
Naw, science won’t go down the tubes. Too useful, too profitable, and, in losing it, you give up too much of an advantage to other “more sciency” nations. It’s here for good, excepting vast nuclear war or plagues that kill 99.9999% of humanity… and even then, the memory of a scientific age will bring mankind back to it.
But the Nation State? It’s just a system of organization, and those can be changed and are, in fact, changed all the time.
Ok. So, fundamentally, what’s happening right now is a new problem. Prior to the internet, publishing news that would reach anyone had a cost. It wasn’t free. Each book was several dollars to print at a minimum. Big, illustrated books like an encyclopedia probably cost $10-$20 per paper volume in actual printing costs. (not the total cost, just the price you *had *to pay or the publisher loses money)
In addition, it cost *money *to typeset a book. Not just anybody could make a professional looking book on their computer in a few weeks. Shonky, uncredible information by cultists would just look like some xerox copies of a rant about UFOs or whatever.
So there was a minimum standard to the *quality *of information that tended to make it into books and the airwaves, pre ~2000 or so. If you’re going to spend your hard earned money to buy a newspaper, buy a copy of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or is it going to be Stormfront? If you’re going to buy an encyclopedia, are you going to buy Antivaxxers monthly or the Encyclopedia Britannia? (which, if you read the section on vaccines, will have a tone that is completely positive)
It was much easier to see and dismiss fake news because it didn’t have the appearance of legitimacy.
I don’t know what we are going to do about this problem. I have vague ideas regarding “bayesian networks” and “peer to peer trust voting using cryptocurrency” and “fact checking artificial intelligence” and other high tech solutions for this high tech problem - but in all honesty they are just notions, I don’t know how to construct actual running code to accomplish this task.
