Similarities

This weeks lecture was all about the Web 2.0. Michael Honey Drew similarities between what happened when the printing press was invented in europe around 1430-ish ( one thing I want to add is that at uni I have heard a lot of different dates been thrown around from various people about the invention of the printing press. Ranging from 1430 to 1550. My understanding is that in europe, it was invented in about 1434. I could be wrong though as I am not an expert on the topic. But it really doesn’t really matter I have just found it interesting…… Back to the story).  and the current situation of the web today. Prior to the invention of the printing press the Church had a lot of control over scripts that were all hand written. It is important to add that the culture before the invention was largely an oral one. Monks mainly interpreted the readings to the public ( and the hand written scripts weren’t so widespread because they could not be as easily duplicated).  So in a way the public could only believe essentially what they were told. This meant that those in power had a great deal on control over public. So when the Printing press came along, the Church and those in positions of power did not like it at all because they did not have the same control over what and how the public learnt. Instead of relying on the Church and the spoken word to learn, people who could read were able to go off and learn by themselves, and interpret the information themselves. Attempts to censor printed books and ban certain books were made, but they still managed to circulate among the general public, and have an impact. The effect that the invention of the printing press has had of the world and the shaping of modern society has been debated by such people as Elizabeth EisensteinThe Printing Press as an Agent of Change)  and Marshal McLuhan (The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)

(Note: most of my knowledge of the invention of the printing press has come from an essay that I wrote for another university unit about the invention)

A similar thing is happening today. The internet opens up a massive gateway of information that is available to anyone that has access to a computer and an internet connection. It is known that some Governments, such as the Chinese Government try to control what can be viewed by the public on the internet by censoring what can be accessed online  (see What are we complaining about post).  It could be argued that some Governments (not all) are censoring because they want a greater deal of control over what the public can view online. Will the effort of control from some Governments shape what the internet in the future? No one can be certain, but not if Google can help it. I am talking specifically about Google’s recent activity in relation to censorship that are highlighted in the article linked and in one of my posts.It is very hard to predict where the internet will go in the future. We know that there is much more user interaction with the advent of social networking sites and wiki pages where the general public are the ones adding the content rather that the content being provided for public. There is much more of an emphasis on peer-to-peer and open source functionality. When the internet was invented by Tim Burners Lee in 1989, no one could predict how successful the internet would become,and how quickly it would evolve. Realistically we are still in the  early days of this technology it is exciting to think how much more the internet might evolve in another 21 years.

It is worth reading this article titled ”we are the web” that was one of the readings for the lecture.                                                  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html

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