The Printing Press

It's probably true that I wouldn't be typing this post if the printing press didn't exist. In fact, there are a lot of things that would be different if the printing press didn't exist, such as books, religion, culture and education.

I always knew the printing press was an important invention. That was something I was taught in middle school. It made sense that the printing press was that important too, because it made spreading information easier. But I never realized how much impact the printing press has had. There are so many connections, and so many things that rely on having available information.

For example, the French Revolution wouldn't have been possible without the printing press. People who weren't rich enough to gain access to books or be literate were taken advantage of; they didn't know the truth, so they didn't know they were being lied to. Then the printing press came along, and with more available books, more people became literate, and more people realized just how unfair their society was. Then, after the French Revolution came the renaissance. This impacted art and culture around the world and has shaped a lot of art styles today. None of this would have been possible without the printing press.

Another example is how the printing press made lots of scientific innovations possible. Without the printing press, there was no way to share discoveries. That meant people couldn't build off of another innovation and make it better, or make a new discovery based on something someone else learned. All scientific knowledge came from the knowledge of the people in the area, which was limited, compared to the all the potential knowledge. But with the printing press, people could share their ideas and inventions across the world and scientific discovery took off. Without the printing press, our technology would be very behind, probably by hundreds of years.

These are they types of connections I never made about the printing press. Everything is really interconnected in ways I didn't realize, so the invention of one thing could spark the inventions of thousands of other technologies the way the printing press did. The effects of the printing press ripple out, so the end result isn't really there because of the printing press directly, it's there because of something else that wouldn't exist without the printing press. Still, the end result wouldn't have existed without the printing press. I learned a lot of new information about the printing press, and I hope we continue having lectures that expand my view on things I already knew.