Books, Ideas, and Thinking

"It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas, and thinking... "

Our class discussion Thursday definitely got me thinking. Thinking about how printing changed the way people think. And I didn't even have to read a book to start getting ideas about it (although I will be consulting plenty of them soon enough to see if I can validate some of those ideas).

In this post, I'm addressing the communicating knowledge learning outcome of our class, that is, that "students recognize differences in the forms through which knowledge is preserved, communicated, and experienced and can interpret the consequences of these differences historically and personally."

Printing is obviously a different way of preserving, communicating and experiencing knowledge than the folk and oral traditions we've talked about before. Less obvious is the difference between written (by hand) knowledge and print knowledge. However, as we talked about in class, print has some very important differences that allowed it to change the world. In the words of Paul Gray, who authored an article about Gutenberg for TIME magazine, "printing proved to be the greatest extension of human consciousness ever created."

Here are a few of my IDEAS about how and why printing has had such a huge impact.

Idea 1: Accessibility
Idea 2: Authority
Idea 3: Literacy

Which of these do you think had the greatest impact on the world and why?