Why is the impact of the invention of the printing press comparable to the Internet

The communication revolution was marked by the invention of the printing press by the German Johannes Gutenberg in 1436. The impact of the printing press on daily life soon became apparent, and its importance is comparable to the impact of the Internet today. The amount of printed materials at that time was quite alarming: a person born in 1453 (when Constantinople fell) looked back on his life at the age of 50 and saw that people had printed about 8 million copies with new printing techniques The number of books exceeds the total number of European handwritten books since the city of Constantinople was built in 330.

In today's society, we take printing as a matter of course. Printing has already become an important part of our daily life, so that we rarely think about the important impact of printed text on our way of thinking.

Medieval manuscripts have their own qualities, and the content of manuscripts is constantly changing with the subjective input of different scribes. However, printing removes subjective factors and provides a more rational, accurate, and analytical way to acquire knowledge. At the same time, printing is different from an oral culture that relies on memory. It does not lead to formal stereotypes, and it can store memories and make information more searchable (in the form of catalogs, indexes, footnotes, and references), thus It has deepened the thinking and expanded the number of words. Printing has also developed a more elaborate language system that can be used by people according to specific scenarios or experiences.

Printing has had a profound impact on the development of human business and trade: printing introduces tables, lists, and graphics to provide a more objective and accurate description method than personal evaluation. Printing not only standardizes the map, but also makes it cheaper and can be copied in large quantities, thereby improving the predictability of land travel and sea navigation, and thus greatly promoting the development of commercial trade. Printing also makes the emergence of commercial contracts possible, making it a key element of long-distance trade and expanding commercial trade in remote areas. In the era of feudal society, economic contact mainly relied on oral communication, and economic activities were also limited to close-range transactions.

In the era of oral culture, a person's "speech" is enough to determine the arrangement of economic activities. Even today, accountants still use the word audit to refer to financial audits, and the origin of this word can even be traced back to the feudal economic era. At that time, auditors must shout out financial information to verify the authenticity of transactions. In addition, printing also opened up a new model of modern bookkeeping. Standardized bills of lading, process bills, invoices, cheques and promissory notes can be transported over long distances and stored for a long period of time, thereby providing a diversified and quite expandable management method. As new energy sources such as wind power and hydropower continue to expand business models, this management approach just matches them. With the development of the printing industry, commercial "credit" is guaranteed in written form with a personal signature.

The combination of printing technology and renewable energy has a huge impact on people's literacy and energy, and it also poses a huge challenge to the feudal hierarchy. The synergy between the two, combined with the gradual improvement of road and waterway capacity, all these factors have accelerated the transaction speed, reduced transaction costs, and made long-distance trade possible.

The new communication / energy matrix not only shortens the distance and time, but also connects people who have been in isolation for centuries, but also encourages humanity to open up, and thus forms a worldwide concept and thought of the world.

After centuries of localism and xenophobia gradually disintegrated, mankind began to imagine all new possibilities. This period of prosperity was referred to by historians as the "Northern Renaissance"-a comprehensive awakening of literature, language, scientific experiments, and exploration of the new century.

By the late Middle Ages, Europe had more than 1,000 economically viable towns. In addition to providing grain storage, accommodation and shops, these city centers have also become a gathering place for various craftsmen.

These new urban jurisdictions are often referred to as "free cities" and are considered to be independent of local lords. For example, according to general practice, if a serf flees from a feudal lord and takes refuge in the Free City for one year and one day, then the serf becomes a free man, and he can freely move from one free city to another A free city and settle there.

Craftsmen in the new town (metalworkers, weavers and dyers, ordnance makers, masonry, embroiderers and glassworkers, notaries, hatmakers and furniture makers) joined the industry association to facilitate the establishment of quality standards for goods And stipulate the fixed price and output of the product. The guild does not fully adopt the market mechanism, the price of the goods it sets is the so-called "fair price" rather than the market price.

Editor in charge: Liu Yang

100g Toothpaste

100G Toothpaste,Toothpaste For Sensitive Teeth,Desensitizing Toothpaste,Stain Removal Toothpaste

Shenglong Co.,Ltd , https://www.sl-oralcleaning.com

Posted on