"It's interesting to note that one of the first reactions of the [Catholic] Church [to the advent of printing] was to propose licenses for those who could print the Bible. This sounds vaguely familiar today as the world of the professional press tries to deal with the exploding world of the personal media revolution -- pejoratively dubbed 'user-generated content' by those of us who can’t handle the fact that the 'jewel [of the clergy]' is once again in the hands of the laity."
Making the comparison with today
"The power of knowledge was in the hands of everyday people. Anybody could become a priest. Authority was challenged, and the whole world changed."
This was one of the comments
"That all sounds rather familiar: Let’s see … The
invention of recorded music means no one will pay money to attend a live concert
anymore. … Photography is the death of the visual arts. … Radio will destroy
newspapers. … TV will destroy both newspapers and radio. … TV dinners are the
death of cooking. … No one will pay to watch cable TV, especially after
television content has been free for so many years. ... And certainly no one
will pay even more to watch premium channels after they’ve already paid to watch
basic cable TV. … No one will pay to see movies on the big screen now that they
can watch them on their VCRs. … No one will pay for DVDs or CDs anymore because
it’s too easy to copy and distribute them without paying. ... No one will pay to
hear satellite radio when there's so much radio content that's free.The
Gutenberg analogy is curious. Is the suggestion that the vast majority of
readers over the past few centuries have been writing and printing their own
books at home and exchanging them with one another for free, rather than
willingly paying publishers for books written by the small percentage of people
who write things that are actually worthy of being read?"
No comments:
Post a Comment