Penguin Blog: Tools and Transformations

Penguin, the publisher of Here Comes Everybody, has invited me to guest post this week on the Penguin blog, and I'm using the space to talk about how transitions in communications tools affect media.

First up, the comparison between the internet and the printing press:

It's worth noting that most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient. Readily available translations of scripture did destroy the Church as a pan-European institution. Most of the material produced by the new class of publishers was flyweight. Scribes did lose their social function. And so on, through a battery of transformations including public scrutiny of elites, the international spread of political foment, and even literate women. (The book to read on these transitions is Elizabeth Eisenstein's two-volume work The Printing Press as an Agent of Change.)

All of which brings me to the internet. It too democratizes both production and consumption of media. It too is producing a staggering volume of new material, some good but most flyweight. It too is upending the role of traditional gatekeepers and destroying the older economics of scarcity. And it too is leading to a cottage industry of hand-wringing: "Why can't we just get a little bit of internet, but keep most things the way they were?"

Read the whole thing here. There's also a podcast interview about the book.