HU520: A Review of Deibert's Chapter 3

Deibert, Ronald J. (1997). Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia:

Communication in World Order Transformation, New York: Columbia U. P., pp. 67-93

Go to review of Chapter 4.

What are the Medium's Multiple Messages?

Print and the Medieval to Modern Wold Order Transformation: Distributional Changes

• "trajectory of social evolution" (67) toward what? Hegelian note sounded here. The problem with using a evolutionary metaphor or analysis.
• Distributional changes = change in the relative power of social forces as a function of changes in communication modes: transmition and storage: some (power relations--Foucault) will be favored while others will be place at a disadvantage.

Social forces may = collectives of people not abstractions of that exist in and of themselves. (Foucault)

Eisenstein does a more thorough job of covering the next issues:

• Reformation: Technologies have uninteneded consequences and fathoming those are difficult for those living through them: Church initially enthusiastic about printing press. "Divine art"
• Demand for litergy drove initial investment in presses even though eventually printing press "closely intertwined" with Reformation though not a "causal relationship" between them.
• Other reformation issues: legalistic papal structures, economic deteriorization, outbreaks of heresies, oppresive social situtation, growing number of burghers, peasants, artisans, and merchants, humanist academics => a feeling of unrest (70).
• Properties of printing favored Reformation interests. "The FIT":
  • 1517-1518 530% increase in production of pamphets--vulgar tounge. A critical mass with timely acceleration.
  • Pmphlets: quarto format easy to smuggle, sell, transport, circulate, reproduce. CHEAP--the cost of a hen.

The medium's message: cheap reproduction => mass distribution, subversion of monastic/papal monopoly on literacy or interpretation of "the Word."

• Evangelical preachers (radio shows today, evangelical groups meeting today on the web? A highly conservative and elitist place in general).
• each person their own theologian.
• devistating caricatures of papal officials
• Printing houses serve as "nerve centers"
• always on the offensive: know how to use the media:

(same true of business vs. academic cultures in current times?)

(where are our nerver centers these days in English studies departments, in the culture at large?)

The medium's message: literacy rates grow faster in Protestant vs Catholic regions. same thing happening in our current religion of science and technology literacies in countries other than the US?

• black market in book trade
• Church couldn't sell what they wanted population to have (like Literature faculty in many universities?)
• Reformation reached back before printing, and had other factors, but without printing, wouldn't have been as successful.

To the top?

Scientific Humanists

• Early printers entrepreneurs: recognized market in scientific hunaist movement. Print favored these folks/this moverment (75).
• Growth of universities, more hostpitable urbn setting, rediscovery of classical Greek and Roman texts, ocean navigation, observations of heavens, technical discoveries, Aristotelian emphasis on "ovservation and critical comparison of observations.

(Eisenstein--ability to compare observation because of more consistent reproduction via printing)

• New mindset along side "dramatic increase in the sheer volume of circulating works" in spite of errors in printing.
• cross-referencing, indexing, pagination, section breaks, running headers, title pages, index cards, standarized copies,

(Today we might think similarly about out database environments of today--including SGML/XML publishing.)

• Move toward individualized study of standardized texts.: detached analytical, "impersonal" mode so prelection and reasoning, fit the scientific mindset better than the personal spiritual, collective mindset. (Eisenstein's claim that print decentralized religion but centralized science)
• Slow accretion of more accurate texts to study. (Basis for our deterministic and Hegelian tendencies in the modern era?)

What tendencies does a fast paced, nearly synchronous media ethos move us toward?

To the top?

New Media Environment and the Constitution of the Modern Order

• ". . . emergence of an urban bourgeoisie committed to commercia exchange, contractual sociao-economic relations, and capitalist entrepreneurship" (79).
• shared collective interest in some form of centralized rule: security & standardization: centralized state bureaucracies, the primary feature of the modern world order!
• feudalism fades as we move from an oath society to a contractual one: from a world of gesture and orality to one of written contracts. Feudal systems unfavorable to trade
• Improvements in agriculture, changes in climate and demograpphics, international trade, increasing dependence on monetary trade ("invisibles").
• New groups in towns of commerce welcome new power relationships. "the growth of the urban bourgeoisie and the spread of printing worked sybioticaly, wit each spurrig on the development o the other" (83).
• insationable demand for printed products

What insatiable demands are we experiencing? (synchronous business activity, realtime feedback in edcuation, investment, manufactoring, service industries.)

• Double-entry bookkeepting, accounting practices, ...

Emergence of Modern Centralized State Bureaucracies

• roots in 11th & 12th century secular literacy and lay use of written documents (86).
• (see Avatar of the Word for more on this). consolidation of nation states occures: military technologies, population pressures, economic boom, standing armies, war fleets, demands of ware require domestic stability and need to raise constant revenues => need for bureaurcies, secular literacy, standardized communication

We train, educate students who then choose jobs and those jobs determine the type of info. that it distributed in our culture. Choose work carefully because it may be the most important contribution you make to our culture: it will determine what your daily transactions are about and what media are best suited.

• Foucault's "disciplined state"--micro disciplinary practices that keep the culture running an apparently "natural" way.
• Barber and precise maps: see Wood and Verilio for more. printing fueled disciplinary state of public education.
• Centralized states benefit more from print culture and slowly surpass city-leagues, and now countries (multinational corporations and mega-regional trading groups: EU and NAFTA).

To the top?

 Go to review of Chapter 4.