Motivations for the Development of Writing Technology. & The Book Trade comes of Age: The Sixteenth Century

Motivations for the Development of Writing Technology.

Writing technology was developed to find more productive ways to write and to reproduce written material for profit. With this said, technology is always reinventing itself. The computers of today, will soon be computers of the past. Now the technologies we use are cheaper and easier to obtain compared to how much it would of cost in the past. Print text has been around as long as the Gutenberg age.

Writing machines are known for their unlimited supply of symbols and the ability for the writer to edit and revise. Before the movable type invention during 1450, writers had to create each individual character to form their texts.  However, the Chinese created movable type before the Gutenberg era...more than four hundred years before. Pi Sheng created his types out of baked clay, not metal. However, the art failed because they needed much more bins compared to western movable type. The finances weren't there.

Printing brings the needs and desires of many into one art form. Religions can maintain traditions and educational institutions can expand the growing need to teach others.  Movable type used the manuscript only once, while the printing press required to be hand cut in either wood or metal. They desired the development of technology such that of the keyboard, so that it would be more convenient to input words. They wanted to perform the given tasks faster than by traditional methods of a pen and paper. The important thing, however, is that both technologies were more convenient to the public and less expensive to hiring scribes.
Comment: I enjoyed the fact that the author included that moveable type existed way before the Gutenberg era. The fact that money stopped some people around the world from furthering what would soon become a revolutionizing idea is relevant to even today. Today there are people with all sorts of ideas, and sometimes the funds just aren't there.

Question: Do you feel like the editing and revising feature of writing machines is a negative quality when it comes to writing development? If yes, in what ways?

The Book Trade comes of Age: The Sixteenth Century

The Italian book become a style icon for how a book should look like. It encouraged the spread of a more modern look, and it increased the use of Roman and italic type instead of a Gothic type used before. Illustrations were featured on a clean black on white ground appearance with a more classical look compared to years before of eccentric design.

In the growth of printing, certain people were catered to for their reading needs such as students, parish clergy, and ordinary lay people. For example, parish clergy and lay people read books that contained text that tended to be smaller and cheaper.

The publishing industry benefited mainly from Italy, where the movement began, and then all through Europe. Because of the growing industry, all types of books were now being created such as grammar books, readers, and reference works. Classical proverbs, and humanistic literature was produced in countless editions to satisfy the needs of the public.

Since these editions were beginning to become so popular, the high demand called for a reduction in prices. Instead of big print text on pages, the size of the text became smaller so that more text could fit on a page. The less amount of pages in the book meant that it would be cheaper for the consumer to buy and cheaper for the producer to make.

With the demand of printing, came the need for the civil and ecclesiastical authorities to keep an eye on what was being produced, printed, sold, and consumed. This allowed many protection from their works being reproduced by others. State and religious authorities had a system where new books had to be licensed before publication to ensure their religious conformity. With this growth, came the need of networking, the need of publishers, books sellers, censorship and more. This was the growing age where the desire of the public and writers flourished, as did the need to control the production.

Comment: The idea of the book market flourishing is an amazing time in the world, but this chapter opens the reader's eyes to the challenges and changes in style throughout this time. This is relevant to any era. Once something new is created, the old technology slowly dies out because it becomes less practical.

Question: Do you feel like the regulation during the sixteenth century helped the members of the book trade, or do you think they restricted them too much during that time? Why?