Our ingenuity enabled us to advance humanity to greater heights. It is always that way and never fails. To date, we are in the information age where data is critical to make the step forward. The internet and social media became so integrated into modern society that we associate progress with them. We associated our continuous development when we first have lights on our streets due to the efforts of Edison and Tesla but not light that shot us to technological growth as what we experience today is not the bulb and electricity. But it was the effective relay of information throughout generations from the printing press to the internet.
Long before the printing press, our ancestors passed on knowledge through writing on stone or spoke it to someone so that they passed it down through generations, but it never reached more people and has some discrepancies. Our ancestors relied upon memory for conversing ideas through the next generation. When some began to write and record, some ridiculed the act as synonymous with forgetfulness. Some described it as a show of wisdom without a sense of reality. But it was for a short time; they eventually relied on it.
Despite our ancestors' acceptance of writing down what they discovered or philosophical wisdom for generations to learn, writing has not been easy for them. They wrote in papyrus, stone tablets, and walls to account for history and heritage, but it was not as accessible as what we have today. What they discovered was accessible only through their civilization and not freely obtained by others to further the knowledge. There was a limitation, and as the world becomes connected as what evolves today.
Back then, only a few elite people can access writings that possibly can change the world as we knew it. Aside from accessibility, the text is in a language that few people can read and need special knowledge of a specific language, which is different from today. We have most papers and books in English while having a translated version of them. Mass access to information is critical to what progress we have to date. Without mass access to discoveries, it isn't possible for us to explored more on a subject matter and performed experiments that enable us to discover and rediscover natural phenomena.
We traced back the printing press to ancient china around the Tang dynasty before Gutenberg revolutionized it. Chinese monks used ink to print text into paper, which is block printing. They carved woodblocks to mass-produce text, which Pi Sheng invented a movable one. Gutenberg came in to speed up the printing process by breaking down the traditional woodblocks into individual pieces like separate lower and upper case letters and punctuation marks, to name a few.
At that time, Gutenberg's printing press gave dawn to a new era of public information and reimagined how to democratized access to written text. Countless people stated that Gutenberg sparked the age of bestsellers, with Martin Luther King technically the first one. Gutenberg's printing press influenced us to be aware of what was happening both politically and scientifically at the time through written text. I think the age of information started with the printing press. What technology that we have to date is a byproduct of us having enough access to written text. It is eventually the fundamental tool for technological advancement.
The information age became a streamlined version that Gutenberg's printing press started. The internet allowed us to access information and media throughout the world in our homes despite not going through libraries or purchasing printed copies of the text. The internet speeded up the learning process and resulted in agile technological development. We saw how the printing press changed science since the late fifteenth century and sparked Renaissance into high gears. I can see that the internet can bring science beyond what hundred years ago accomplished.
We knew that the invention of the printing press enabled us to access scientific breakthroughs through written text in a printed scholarly journal. With the internet, scientific discoveries can be accessed easily through our computers and not waiting for papers to arrive through our mailbox. That ease of access speeds up our advancement to new heights, right? The printing press seemed to decentralized the role of information gatekeeper as they control the ideas and how they disseminate them. With the internet, information became accessible to everyone than what the printing press is. The printing press allowed us to make agile progress, but the internet speeds up all things.
Science and information became more accessible through the printing press and the internet. We can't deny that it helped us make advancements that we can dream of, like flying cars and space travel. Over the years, the internet evolves as we have artificial intelligence in place and the invention of blockchain. Access to information became integrated into our lives that we can even earn from it when we used it to boost our skills or explore our passion. We used social media to communicate and have access to relevant information. Businesses looked at data to target their marketing strategies to correct the audience. Without access to information, it is not possible. Although it is intangible, we can use it to our advantage, right? We leveraged from it, and we learn as much as we want to without inherent restriction to access of information or difficulty understanding the language due to effective translations.
Blockchain emerges as the next Gutenberg's printing press. Right now, some people saw it as a quick scheme to become rich, or some look at it as a scam, but what is truly important with blockchain is the technology it poses. That is what people missed. Despite the open access to information, we are still misinformed. We have countless use of blockchain that emerges over the last decade and continue over the next one, but what is vital is that we relied on enabling technology for sharing information, which is common in Gutenberg's printing press, Google, and Nakamoto's Bitcoin protocol.
We thrive on how we can access and use the information to create scientific and technological breakthroughs for years to come. Gutenberg and Nakamoto gave us the means to share information permissionless and the dream of decentralized access to information. Blockchain introduced a new paradigm shift across industries. But we have not felt the extent yet due to the public hesitancy, like what happens to Gutenberg's printing press, but eventually, it will come.
We can draw parallels between the printing press and blockchain. We are consuming content in the written text since we started reading. The printing press democratized literacy, resulting in an opportunity for the rising middle class. Hence the elite can't manipulate society with illiteracy. The printing press shut down the church's monopoly and began the mass communication that propels knowledge breakthrough to greater heights. Blockchain lives the dream of a decentralized society, that we can have better means of expression, efficiency, or scale to communicate. Gutenberg turned information into books while Nakamoto turned money into data by structuring a standard transaction in a peer-to-peer over great distances.
Printing weakened the power of the church by democratizing knowledge and making society literate. In contrast, blockchain aimed to a decentralized transaction, free from central banks and federal reserves, somehow making it peoples' banking network. The blockchain protocol is the new printing press that enables us to access money as Gutenberg did with access to knowledge.
We saw how inventions changed the world, from the scientific method, printing press, the compass, and gun powder to blockchain. It changed the world forever, and it is a matter of time for blockchain and the emerging technology of the information age to do the same. It seems strenuous to see the end game of the information age, unlike how the industrial revolution was. We see technologies scrapped for new ones within a year, and it would continue to be at this rate, at least. Gutenberg paved the access of knowledge, and Nakamoto started to changed our money, and it is just a matter of time, but to say we may access the space, right? Above all, the printing press started it all.
Readings
Melanie Swan, Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy. O'Rielly
Jeremiah Dittmar, Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of The Printing Press, The Quarterly Journal of Economics
Footnote: All images and illustrations is created by the author.