Word: gutenberg
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last year's swarm of millennial retrospectives put a peculiar emphasis on Gutenberg's invention of moveable type, as if it prefigured all subsequent media revolutions: television, the Internet, etc. What the Discovery Channel failed to drool over was the near-simultaneous development of printmaking. In the fifteenth century, woodcuts and engravings were accessible to an audience much larger than the small literate classes, and even today we cannot claim to be anything other than a visual culture. Early prints should be as important to us as early editions of the Bible...
...lacking for other kinds of resources. There are lots of benefits to Harvard you may never get around to using (there's a Gutenberg Bible somewhere), but you'll feel vaguely good just knowing they're nearby. Check out the Van Goghs in the Fogg Art Museum or the world-famous glass flowers. Or see a former dictator speak at the Kennedy School of Government. So many world leaders come you simply won't have time for those who lead countries smaller than France...
Publishing takes another step out of the Gutenberg era this week when a new story by horror impresario Stephen King is released, at the witchy hour of 12:01 a.m. E.T. on March 14, exclusively in electronic form. The 16,000-word tale, Riding the Bullet, issued jointly by Simon & Schuster and Philtrum Press, King's personal publishing imprint, can be ordered online for $2.50 in formats compatible with a variety of e-book and computer devices...
...then there is the problem of impact. Which matters more, a life lost or a life changed forever? How many divisions does the Pope have, Stalin asked. Yet an idea that changes lives can have more power than an army that takes them--which leaves Gutenberg presiding over the 15th century, Jefferson over the 18th. Making body counts the ultimate measure of influence precludes the possibility of heroic sacrifice, a single death that inspires countless others to live their lives differently, a young man in front of a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square. "Five hundred years from...
...Johann Gutenberg invented an efficient press in Germany and used movable type to publish Bibles, transforming Europe...