Gutenberg's Relegation to Obscurity

Imagine the shock of the first peasant that owned a book. Before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press the only people that had books were royalty or a monk that spent their time making copies one handwritten book at a time. Then Gutenberg (remember that’s Johannes Gutenberg, not Steve Gutenberg, star of several irrelevant movies) came along and all of a sudden books evolve into the cornerstone of knowledge in the world. Well, at least the parts of the world that would be recording history (and are thus the de-facto basis of common knowledge). Even though this was so long ago, those of us that grew up during the dawn of the Internet should know how those peasants felt. Really think about that first time online. It was, for many people anyway, a life changing experience. Now, we find ourselves at the tipping point of another revolution of knowledge, and this revolution may relegate Gutenberg to obscurity.
At the turn of the 20th century film began the transition away from print media and put us on the path to our digital world. Manovich wishes, “that somebody, in 1895, 1897, or at least 1903, had realized the fundamental significance of cinema’s emergence and produced a comprehensive record of the new medium’s emergence; interviews with audiences... (37). Still, even without a “comprehensive record” the ways in which film changed the world are easy to trace. Without film there wouldn’t be movie stars, no Hollywood, no MTV’s Jersey Shore! Imagine a world without all this. Dare we dream of such a world, a world where vaudeville is popular (as it was before film) On a serious note, though, without film there would be no television. Television allows residents of Boise, Idaho to still be able to watch a football game in Virginia as the game unfolds.
Television started to steal from the cache of knowledge being hidden away at the secret base of print media headquarters (not a real place). When the news started being broadcast on TV it cut down readership for newspapers. Still, there was a booming market. People were stilling willing to pay for newspapers to be delivered daily. That market is now being encroached upon the Internet. Television laid the groundwork of demand for instant access to knowledge. Newspapers are finding it more and more difficult to stay in business as by the time they arrive, that news is already hours old. Not to mention most major newspapers can now be read for free online causing many people to categorize a newspaper as frivolous spending.
Those who continue to expand the Internet play a similar role here in the 21st century that men like Georges Melies played at the beginning of the 20th century. These are the people that can continue to open us up to even more amazing technological advances. When all is said and done magazines and newspapers will end up the “vaudevilles” of the media world. Just as film made vaudevilles irrelevant, so shall the mighty Internet rendered it’s judgement upon print media. Manovich says, “just as avant-garde filmmakers throughout cinema’s existence offered alternatives to its particular narrative audio-visual regime, the task of avant-garde new media artists today is to offer alternatives to the existing language of computer media” (36). Since most newspapers have launched websites that means that most journalists are now featured on newspaper websites. That alone won’t cripple newspapers and magazines. What will finally kill them off is when people start to trust bloggers, or the avant-garde sect of new media, as legitimate sources of knowledge. Then, everything will be online. At this point we will either succeed with our efforts to digitalize all media, or we will descend into a computer world, just like what happened in the Matrix.
People will adapt. Writers will always be able to be writers. Consumers will likely have to start paying online bills for better access to the sites content. It is critical to acknowledge that these changes may be part of the future. It’s impossible to know what will happen, but it is always a good idea to have a decent idea of what may happen. It seems that now the best bet is probably to embrace digital media .