The printing press was an amazing piece of technology. It’s not even in use anymore as any modern city like Austin is more likely to boast inkjet or laser printing than actual printing presses. But on the other hand the invention of the printing press changed education, communication, and society. It’s rare to run into an invention that influential. What’s more astounding is that people don’t often truly appreciate the impact of the printing press. Printers have changed the world in more ways than we’d ever realize. We might think about the depth of impact that printers have had on society.

Back a few centuries and any time something wanted to be reproduced it had to be done by hand. For example Monks would spend great amounts of time copying the bible letter by letter by hand. This made spreading any sort of information very difficult. Due to the cost of books literacy was much less useful for the common class. It also made translation much less of a demand. Why bother putting something into a bunch of different languages if the only people who are going to read it were the upper class? Especially since the upper classes all shared a common language and it wasn’t the vernacular language but instead most spoke Latin. Being able to mass produce the written word made it possible to market it to the mass populace and rewarded the common person more for literacy.

The printing press changed everything, if we didn’t have mass printing, it wouldn’t simply be business that suffered but culture and society would be vastly changed we wouldn’t have had nearly the impact from literature we have had, that’s true for high culture and low culture. Just as the works of Dostoevsky wouldn’t have had the impact they had in Russia and on Russian culture, the Hunger Games would never have become the sensation it was. The printing press was an incredibly powerful invention, and one that still drives business and culture, the e-book might eventually replace the printed book, but it will never touch its influence on the world. As is printers do more than just spread ideas. They allow people to present business, science or even social interaction with greater ease. Printers might do the most good for businesses. When we see printing companies in cities like Austin where most people have computers we shouldn’t be wondering who doesn’t know how to connect the printer to their computer. We should instead marvel at the continuing importance of the printed word. Posters might not have the impact on society as Don Quixote but we shouldn’t under-estimate the continuing importance of printers to human society.