Response to Reading #10, Eisenstein

As a following impact of printing press, I think, Eisenstein covered very broad areas affected by it. Especillay, she mentioned of the standardization of reading material, which is the format and content of it brought strong impact to the readers, and it's very interesting to me.

I think if we think about the educational role of it, it is very meaningful in that they can more easily and effectively educate many people of Christian doctrine or moral concepts of what to do or not to do. Young readers must have absorbed the standardized rules of how to behave. If we think about learning how to behave currently, there is a lot of educational difference between learning from parents and from the book, which seems to provide more objective and professional knowledge to the learners.

Also, personally, I was very interested in her mentioning, 'people read the books silently, which is quite different from before'. I think it has a profound meaning of it because when there was not prevalent printed materials, a few people who possessed the book must've read it loudly to transfer the content of it, but after inventing printing press, people could read individually.
Especially, by reading silently, they could have more chances of thinking or meditating the material individually. Isn't it wonderful progress for helping people stand on their own?

joohee