print

This page highlights writing about the print revolution. 

There's a more extensive exploration in our ten part profile of print, the book and reading.

     print revolution and the symbolic economy

Elizabeth Eisenstein's magisterial two volume The Printing Press As An Agent Of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformation in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 79) and The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450-1800 (London: NLB 76) by Lucien Febvre & Henri-Jean Martin are essential reading. They offer insights into technologies, markets and consequences.

In comparison Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: Uni of Toronto Press 62) is of significantly lower value for understanding new media or the wider implications of what one pundit characterised as "dried tree flakes encased in dead cow".

Rise of the Knowledge Worker (Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann 98) edited by James Cortada, along with The Knowledge Economy and The Economic Impact of Knowledge - both edited by Dale Neef - provide an excellent introduction to the 'economy of symbolic analysts' - people who, like you, who work with facts & figures. Alistair Black's article The Victorian Information Society in volume 17(1) of The Information Society examines formation of 'information society' institutions and professions in late 19th century Britain, also considered in Theories of the New Media: A Historical Perspective (London: Athlone Press 00) edited by John Thornton Caldwell.

Tendencies & Tensions of the Information Age: The Production & Distribution of Information in the United States (New Brunswick: Transaction 97) by Jorge Schement & Terry Curtis is more restricted in scope but provides a valuable introduction to the information-based economy, extending Machlup's pathbreaking Knowledge, Its Creation, Distribution & Economic Significance (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 84).

Two sites of particular significance are those for the New Paradigms & Parallels: The Printing Press & the Internet project under the auspices of RAND, better known as a defence think tank, and the November 2000 issue of Communications Law in Transition. 



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