Page 45 - Virtual Research Lab flip book

CHAPTER IV
Returning to the Issue of Comparing the Fifteenth- Century Transition in Media with that of Our Time
WHEN I began researching the history of computing in the late 1980s and 1990s, before the existence of most electronic books, I had spent years reading about the history of printing, espe- cially concentrating on the history of printing during the fifteenth century, a period which is often described as a revolution in media. I had also spent several years researching the development of the computing, networking and telecommunications technologies that underpinned the Internet and the World Wide Web. Faced with rapid changes in media, I remained pre- occupied with the idea that we were experiencing a revolution, or, if it was not a revolution in the sense of replacement of one regime with another, at least a transition in media similar to that of the fifteenth century. But as much as I wanted to compare the fifteenth century transition from manu- script to print with the twentieth century transition from primarily print to multi-media websites, the comparison was difficult and problematic, es- pecially since most of the technology underpinning the Internet, including electronic computing, video, sound, and networking, had evolved centuries after printing, and attempting to include those in the comparison confused the matter. The digital editions of traditional print newspapers and maga- zines that incorporated sound and video, as well as text and graphics, were rapidly replacing many print newspapers and magazines, but a complicating factor in formulating a valid comparison was that revolution of print in the fifteenth century concerned primarily books; newspapers and periodicals were a later invention.
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