Summary

Key Quotes

A grand exception in the course of history

To declare our era modern (or post-modern) is a prideful dead end that leaves no room for growth or regression.

Every thought is interested in its own proliferation

The marketplace of ideas is flawed because humans are flawed. They are not rational information processors and more information often leads to worse decisions

The age of print—from Gutenberg to the internet—is a parenthesis in human history, not the natural state. Before print, culture was oral, remixed, and communal; print imposed linearity, fixed text, authorial authority, and property rights over content. Now the internet is restoring pre-print patterns: content is remixed and collaborative, ownership is diminished, and mediators no longer control the conversation. The printing press took centuries to find its purpose, eventually enabling the Reformation, nationalism, and mass democracy—but also witch hunts, censorship, and the commodification of conversation. The lesson for the digital age: focus on expanding institutions that support the good rather than trying to protect against every bad outcome.

Key Takeaways

Notes

1: The Gutenberg Parenthesis

1: The parenthesis

• “A grand exception in the course of history”
• Gutenberg / books:
  • Beginning + end
  • Linear thinking
  • Fixed text → trust
  • Author as authority
  • Property → content
• Nowadays with internet:
  • Content is remixed, remade
  • Ownership is diminished
  • Text → images, emoji, memes, etc.
• “Restoration”, “the future is medieval”
• Books → radio → “the net” / media
• Mediators no longer control the convo

2: Print’s presumptions

• False narrative that the Renaissance is where civilization begins
• “To declare our era modern (or post-modern) is a prideful dead end that leaves no room for growth or regression.”
• Print changed how we think
• Creativity, permanence,etc.
• Pioneer for industrialization

3: Trepidation

• Worries of printing:
• Proliferation of lowbrow content
• Devaluing rare books
• Risk to the church
• Too much reading → waste of time
• “Every thought is interested in its own proliferation”

2: Inside the parenthesis

4: What came before

• Spaces between words in ~200 CE
• Punctuation
• Silent reading
• Paper
• Scroll → codex (books)

5: How to print

• Matrixes / mold casting
  • ~200 for original bible, 55 standard
• More details for original bible print logistics*
• Years of hard work, not a flash

6: Gutenberg

• Born ~1400
• Had to guess which books would be high demand
• 4 early literacies: sacred, learned, bureaucratic, vernacular

7: After the Bible

• Catholocon: dictionary + encyclopedia*
• Stereotyping: casting entire pages
• Movable type inventor*
• Gutenberg seen as the person who fostered education and freedom

8: Print spreads

• Colors, illustrations
• “Rapid” spread geographically
• 90 cities by 1480 (40y)
• New typefaces, punctuation
• “In time, new technologies forge institutional change”
• Venice became home of print
• First press in US in 1638

9: The troubles

• The printing press in early 1500s was “a technology looking for a purpose”
• Standardized the German language
• Luther & The Reformation
• Desacralization of the written word

10: Creation with print

• The technology of print essentially didn’t change for first 100-200 years
• Plays, novels / fiction
• Essays and individualism
• ↑ “Print 2.0” vs Web 2.0 (creation)

11: The birth of the newspaper

• First newspaper in 1605 (150y later)
• Rumor was more trusted than print (source + reputation known vs unknown)
• Eg. witches, demonology
• Not as clean and simple as more truth or less truth with print: in fact both
• Posts and postmen, press
• The key features of a modern political medium
• News / journals as arbiters of truth
• News created nationwide communities by reading same content + aware of such
• “Print capitalism”
• Franklin standardized English
• Newspapers → nationalism, here vs there
• Addiction to the latest

12: Print evolves until 1800s

• Little evolution until 1800s
• Title was a major invention
• Page #s, citations only standard by 1600s
• Indexes

13: Aesthetics of print

• Illustrations → sense of place in the world
• Chemical engraving
• German national font
• Jenson font
• Glossy pages, aged ink

14: Steam + mechanization of print

• Stereotyping
• Steam presses: 200 → 800-1000 pages/h
• Cheaper paper from wood
• Changing aura of books

15: Electricity + industrialization of media

• Concerns with radio
• “The history of printing has been the history of the abolition of the impression”
• ↑ 5 centuries to “remove Gutenberg”

16: The meaning of it all

• Study of technology vs use of technology
• The medium is the message
• Print “made possible” the reformation, scientific revolution
• Oral unifies, print isolates + objectifies
• Secondary orality:
• Argument against technological determinism*
• With the internet, this is a moment of choice as technology → use of

3: Leaving the parenthesis

17: Conversation vs content

• “The death blow to the public conversation was likely struck at the turn of the 20th century when media were mechanized, electrified, and industrialized”
• Content had become commodified
• Need the tech to shift thru all voices to find those worth listening to
• Bridge genre: connect old and new media, transferring existing conventions
  • eg. blog posts
• Coffee house culture*
  • Disregarded status

17.5:

• Regulation of coffee houses to “prevent false news”
• Publishers vs coffee houses ownership over content and distribution
• Views of communication:
  • Transmission: movement / distribution of messages (conquer thru media)
  • Ritual: shared beliefs, maintenance of society at a time, portrayal
• Section 230 and content moderation*
• Should we promote more speech vs should we allow more speech (1st amendment)
• “The marketplace of ideas is flawed because humans are flawed. They are not rational information processors and more information often leads to worse decisions”

18: Death to the mass

• The mass: the base, sheeple, mediocre, blindly obedient, etc.
• ↑ public as object, not participant
• Mass is theory, also a means to conceptualize politics, history, culture, economy, media
• 2 political variants:
  • Aristocratic defense of elite values vs rise of mass participation
  • Democratic defense of masses vs the rise of elites bent on total domination
• 2 views of role of individual:
  • Imprisoned, alienated, without association
  • Individual who is separate or immune from the mass
• 2 views of mass culture:
  • Insulting vulgar taste of the people
  • Defending against crass entertainment imposed upon them by industry
• 2 economic theories:
  • Marxist force to eliminate class
  • Capitalistic market to be exploited by
• ↑ overlying: society is hurting itself
• Mass → targeted media
• 1964 market segmentation
• Poll as normative → descriptive
• Totalitarian: rule by elites answerable to no one
• Mass society: elites and the public try to control each other
• Pluralistic: elites are accountable to public, public cannot be controlled due to multiple commitments to diverse, autonomous groups

18.5:

• By definition, mass media abhors diversity
• Minorities in print*
• Hashtag: no one owns it (bottom up)

19: Creativity and control

• Third-person effect: “others” (not you/me) are susceptible to mass media influence
• Fundamental attribution error etc.
• The illusion of personal objectivity
• Media puts a warped mirror before us: “to it wants make viewers they are better than they are and the world worse than it is”
• History of censorship, licensing, regulation*
• Freedom of expression
• How to define and censor harm and hate?

19.5:

• Nixon, pornography, moral panic
• Moral panic → social control
• Power dynamic of censorship: “an instrument conceived of by moralists, given precision by lawyers, carried out by bureaucrats, but ultimately in the control of elites who set norms…”
• In the long term, the chance of truth winning is high
• Different author + publisher monetization methods*
• Strengthening, lengthening of copyright
• —
• Does discourse / discussion have a copyright?
• Copyright: controlling scarcity
• Internet is abundance
• Universal agreement that copyright is broken (even from incumbents)
• Copyright → “credit-right”
  • Eg. TikTok

20: Institutional revolutions

• “Print enabled conversation until conversation was commodified by media”
• Institutions: the rules, norms, and standards that govern behavior + the organizations that execute and enforce them
• “In the darwinian struggle between nations, firms, and individuals, societies are driven to find institutions that get the job done best under the circumstances faced at the time”
• Privacy concerns → dislike with being measured
• Are police a “forever institution”?
• Nations are a parenthesis invention
• Story vs objectivity
  • Theory of mind is not as objective, effective as we’d hope (eg. clashing interpretations of history)
• We can’t possibly understand the incomprehensible complexity of our world
  • But ML/AI is a tool to ↑
• Books: linear stories, web: exploding complexity
• Recommendation: “embrace the chaos” and keep new tech unregulated (eg. internet)
• Study: only 1% users → 80% fake news exposures, 0.1% → 80% of shares
• Solution / what worked before: focusing on expanding institutions supporting the good, rather than protecting against the bad
• “The cyberspace renaissance”
• Most important task: shift from
  • Technology → humanity

• • Chronically negative → positive