Source: Law & Liberty
by Reuven Brenner
“Before the Internet and social media, there was Johann Gutenberg’s seventeenth-century movable-type printing innovation. (The Chinese invented something similar centuries before, but without impact). It revolutionized the spread of literacy and contributed to the Protestant movement’s break from the Catholic Church. Between the printing press and the Internet, there were other things: the telegraph, radio, and TV. None diffused written texts as the Internet and the printing press have done. Books became the ‘social media’ of the time — with many of the negative side effects the Internet has now. There have been endless studies over the centuries about how the fast spread of literacy disseminated general knowledge, but almost no mention of how, when accompanied by increased prosperity, it also gave rise to less elevated literature.” (06/25/24)