<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">There's a new post on the <a href="http://bit.ly/weblan">Web of Language</a>:<div><br></div><div><!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal">The iPad: What is a Gutenberg moment, anyway?<o:p></o:p></b></p>
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<div>For months, commentators have been referring to the release of Apple’s
iPad – it finally went on sale on April 3 – as a “Gutenberg moment,” or
insisting, if they don’t like the idea of the iPad, that it has no hope
of being a Gutenberg moment. In either case they’re comparing the new
tablet device, which most of them hadn’t even seen, to Johannes
Gutenberg’s rollout of the first printing press in the 1450s. To be
fair, these commentators never saw Gutenberg’s press either, or any kind
of printing press at all. <br>
<br>
A Gutenberg moment is one which changes the way we produce and consume
text as dramatically as Gutenberg’s machine did. Before Gutenberg rigged
a wine press so that it could press a sheet of paper against inked,
movable, cast-metal type, scribes laboriously copied books by hand, leaf
by leaf, volume by volume, a process that was so slow and so expensive
that only the filthy rich could afford to own any books. Gutenberg’s
press enabled the mass production of books, whose lower unit cost
democratized book ownership: anybody could buy a book, or at least
borrow one from the library. Another thing about the Gutenberg moment:
scribes were notorious for introducing errors into the books they
copied, but the press allowed books to be cloned ad infinitum. After
Gutenberg, there’s perfect copy, every time.<br>
<br>
If you believe the printing press did all that, then there’s a bridge in
Brooklyn you might want to buy, or maybe I could interest you in some
priced-to-sell subprime mortgage instruments? </div><div><br>
... and if you want to read the rest of this post, click on the Web of
Language: <br>
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