Implications of Gutenburg's Invention

Consider a hypothetical case in which what Gutenburg invented was not the printing press, but the television set. How might the world that followed have been different? We must first acknowledge that this assumption requires as precondition an entirely different development of technology in the late medieval and Renaissance eras. Television cannot exist in isolation; it requires electronic technology, which in turn requires a sufficient industrial base to provide electrical power supply, and to produce the precision components needed in electronic engineering.

In such a world, for example, Columbus' ships would surely have been driven by power, not sail, and they would have navigated by radar, a technology closely akin to television. For the unfortunate Aztecs and Incas the result might have been little different; they were hopelessly outmatched by the Spanish intruders as it was. But the Europe of 1492 was also threatened by Ottoman Turkey, and had the Europeans possessed advanced technology, the Turks would have had to either adopt that techn

. . .
ng. The appeal of television evangelists, we may suggest, is primarily to those who already subscribe to their particular style of religion; television evangelism is a tool of mobilization, not one of conversion. Let us now turn back to the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. We mentioned earlier that the Reformation was closely linked to the development of the printing press; it is time now to inquire why. The reason, in a nutshell, is that the printing press made it possible to enormously expand dissemination of the Bible. The Bible was the first book Gutenburg printed, and in the generation that followed, editions of the Bible, both the Latin Vulgate that was the authorized Church version and translations into vernacular languages, poured off presses across Europe. The effect of this dramatically increased availability of the Bible was to make its authority in matters of religion accessible to large numbers of people--and therefore to undermine the authority of the Catholic Church. Until the advent of the printing press, Bibles were relatively rare and costly, and were moreover available for the most part only in Latin, readable only by the educated. Biblically-based challenges to the authority and doctrin
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Understanding Media, Age Print, Bible Bible, Protestant Reformation, Crosby Bond, Gutenberg Galaxy, Renaissance Catholicism, Electronic Church, Turkey Europeans, Catholic Church, printing press, gutenberg galaxy, television technology, televised renaissance catholicism, shaped print, television evangelism, bible bible, television instead, increased availability, 2nd ed, development printing, mcluhan gutenberg galaxy,
Approximate Word count = 1654
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)