From Breanne --> "The Book Trade" and "Motivations"

“Motivations for the Development of Writing Technology” – Richard Rawnsley

• The progression of writing technologies has often been delayed by the ability to adapt a new technology to the various languages across the world and the cost of producing text with a new technology.
  
  When printing and the moveable text were first introduced the cost discouraged writers from printing their text, however as the technology improved the efficiency and results outweighed the cost of production. This is a typical trend for most text technologies, when society realizes that the benefits outweigh the cost any trepidations writers may have had towards the new technology go out the window.
   
• Our modern day keyboard, known as the QWERTY, was not created randomly but rather the creator of the keyboard found that the layout of this keyboard was more efficient and allowed writers to type quickly without jamming the keys.

“The Book Trade Comes of Age: The Sixteenth Century”

• In the 16th century readers saw a shift from books written in Latin to books written in vernacular languages.
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  Just has the printing process helped to spread the Catholic faith by mass producing the Bible, the process also revolutionized the Protestant Reformation by allowing Protestants to spread their literature and message past the Church door where Martin Luther nailed his 95 Thesis.
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• Catholics attempted to enforce censorship and regulations to the printing process to keep opposing philosophies from leading people away from the Church.

Comments: I always wondered why the keyboard was not in alphabetical order, so I found the antidote about the QWERTY keyboard fairly interesting. I also found the parallels between the use of the printing press in the Protestant Reformation and the use of twitter to start a political movement today.

Question: One could say that there are similarities between Martin Luther’s use of the printing press during the Protestant Revolution and the use of twitter during many political revolutions today. Are there other forms of text technology that have been used over the years to bring a movement together?