Print's Impression

Over the last weeks, we've talked about the onset of various forms of mass media. The first on our list was the book, turned into a mass medium by the invention of the printing press, and it's simplified, more concise design brought about by Gutenberg. Yet the printing press had much more lasting impressions than those it left on papers. The press became a much more fascinating and liberating invention the more I learned about it's consequences. It's cheap, bulk production process allowed dissenters, both religious and political, to spread their ideas much more safely. It's widely considered a near direct cause of the Protestant Reformation, and it allowed scientific and political ideas to spread as well, all with a speed and potency never before seen. You could argue that we'd be decades behind on science, without Protestantism as a distinct branch of Christianity, and still in an age of monarchies without one German man deciding to print bibles for the poor.