Printing Redux

I've been reading some work by Elisabeth Eisenstein as a supplement to the class, specifically her work on printing. It's interesting to say the least. One revelation is that the early printers became the center of diverse and heterogeneous communities that functioned something like businesses, households and research institutes. Printer's households became refuges for people with diverse viewpoints, even people who would normally disagree with each other. They sometimes, according to Eisenstein, identified as families. (As we all know, familes allow for a broad range of views.)

So, the print centers were also centers of tolerance, discussion and pluralism. While printing might have had large scale impacts as McLuhan notes it also had small-scall influences that were quite profound as well. It created a new kind of community based less on tribal/religious/national identity than ones based on shared values of knowledge, curiousity and dialogue. Of course, also that of profit generated by book sales.

McLuhan notes that print gave the power to act without reacting, which is, after all, the basis of our modern ideas of knowledge as a communal experience.