The Internet revolutionized communication—there’s no question about that.   But it wasn’t the first time.  In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press that featured movable type and influenced the world as much—and probably more—than the Internet.  Let’s take a look.

 

Prior to the Gutenberg’s printing press, everything had to be handwritten.  If you wrote a book, and you wanted it to read by 1,000 people, then you had to copy it down word for word 1,000 times.  Needless to say, this made it difficult for the average person to get his hands on a good novel prior to the 15^th century.   Newspapers, magazines, brochures, and other written forms of communication were all virtually out of the question.

 

The printing press changed all of that.  It enabled the written word to be reproduced in mass quantity, and then distributed to a wide audience.  This transformed the flow of information—news, ideas, and facts spread throughout Europe for the first time.  The invention of Gutenberg’s printing press has been compared to the development of language and the invention of the alphabet.  It was easily the highlight of the Renaissance, and it made possible the period of enlightenment that followed.  The printing press ended the confusion and isolation of the Middle Ages, and the world was never the same again.

 

Has the Internet done all that?  Just as the printing press did, the Internet revolutionized the flow of information.  It enabled news, ideas, and other data to be shared almost instantly, and then viewed by nearly everyone.   With the power of the Internet, international businesses can be run from a single computer, the average working man can be a political commentator (the newest rage in the Internet is “blogging,” where users instantly post opinions and information for large audiences to see), and scholars or students can do extended research without ever getting out of a chair. 

 

In 1991, the “World Wide Web” was introduced, which is a user-friendly browser that enables people to access and use the shared information of “cyberspace.” Since that time, the Internet has succeeded in making the world “smaller” (for example, a person living in Japan can share a quick story with person living in Brazil, or buy a painting from someone living in Norway…). 

 

It’s debatable, but the impact of the Internet still falls short of Gutenberg’s printing press.  For starters, the world was already moving in that direction.  The telegraph and telephone were invented in the late 1800s.  The early 1900s brought about radio and television.  These were all breakthroughs in information technology.  The growing popularity of the computer and the Internet in the late 20^th century only took these previous inventions to another level.

 

The Gutenberg printing press stood alone.  Earlier civilizations had experimented with the concept of movable type, but the flow of information remained virtually the same for several thousand years.  Within decades after the invention of the printing press, new ideas were spreading rampantly through Europe.  It literally changed the course of history (of course, it remains to be seen how much the Internet changes the world over the course of several generations).