The Gutenberg Parenthesis

The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet

De: Professor Jeff Jarvis

Narrado por: Professor Jeff Jarvis

Duración: 13 h y 7 m

Resumen del Editor

The Gutenberg Parenthesis traces the epoch of print from its fateful beginnings to our digital present – and draws out lessons for the age to come.

The age of print is a grand exception in history. For five centuries it fostered what some call print culture – a worldview shaped by the completeness, permanence, and authority of the printed word. As a technology, print at its birth was as disruptive as the digital migration of today. Now, as the internet ushers us past print culture, journalist Jeff Jarvis offers important lessons from the era we leave behind.

To understand our transition out of the Gutenberg Age, Jarvis first examines the transition into it. Tracking Western industrialized print to its origins, he explores its invention, spread, and evolution, as well as the bureaucracy and censorship that followed. He also reveals how print gave rise to the idea of the mass – mass media, mass market, mass culture, mass politics, and so on – that came to dominate the public sphere.

What can we glean from the captivating, profound, and challenging history of our devotion to print? Could it be that we are returning to a time before mass media, to a society built on conversation, and that we are relearning how to hold that conversation with ourselves? Brimming with broader implications for today’s debates over communication, authorship, and ownership, Jarvis’ exploration of print on a grand scale is also a complex, compelling history of technology and power.

©2023 Jeff Jarvis (P)2023 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Reseñas de la Crítica

A refreshingly sanguine take. (Houman Barekat)

Provocative and fizzing with ideas. (Alan Rusbridger)

The Gutenberg Parenthesis follows the development of printing and its impact on society right up to the present day … Jarvis’s tempo is … fast and compelling, sweeping the reader along from Gutenberg to the present digital predicament facing society. (Richard Ovenden)

A vision of the future as seen in a rearview mirror

Listening to this book gave me a great appreciation for the printed word and a contextual understanding of disruption in communications technology. Well written, well performed, and a fascinating read all the way through.