The earthquake was followed by centuries of aftershocks. The history is surprisingly little known. We do not have time to supply it here in full.
Suffice it to say that the revolution created many of the Western World's greatest works of fiction, vast numbers of topical pamphlets and broadsides, and even more vast numbers of advertising fliers. The entrepreneurs that drove that explosion of printed material were also the tech bros of their time. They rapidly improved their machinery, their product packaging, their distribution and their advertising.
What didn't improve, however, was the product itself — the content. Ironically, it did improve in that ever more of the new publications were printed in the vulgar language of the given country. But the educated portion of the European population continued to write their works in Latin and less often in Greek. In fact, the first wave was brief and smaller, of publishing new and old works in the classical languages. Classical Greek works actually became generally available for the first time.
The second wave brought fiction in the vulgar tongues and rapidly reached a level that gave us the likes of Rabelais, Shakespeare, Cervantes and the wide range of Italian writers from whom they stole/borrowed. Many of those Italian writers flourished before Gutenberg's press. Their books were copied by hand in monasteries and urban workshops. Copies were rare and they were very expensive.
Non-fiction, however, was the best seller. Seeking the widest possible sales (that is to say profits), it was written in the language of the common man, by freelance writers and translators, and included wild tales of men with their heads embedded in their chests, cannibals, giant sea-serpents, the most gruesome murders under the most lurid circumstances, etc. Witches were suddenly no longer rare beings but were everywhere around as was a literature informing the reader how to identify them. In short, most non-fiction was on a par with our supermarket tabloids and click-bait sites and throve for the same reasons. On the level of the pamphlet, non-fiction was in large part an entertaining topical fiction. It was not simply fiction, it was often dangerous fiction that could result in torture, violent attack, death, maiming and financial loss.
For the first 50-100 years after Gutenberg, legitimate information was largely available only in Latin. It was the universities' way of protecting their own markets. To know Latin was to know the facts of things... as they existed in classical times. More importantly, as greater circulation placed non-fiction beyond the universities' monopoly control, classical facts slowly began to give way to non-fiction based upon observation and experimentation. At first, still in Latin.
Knowing the history of the printed word, it is striking to see just how much the more recent history of the Internet runs parallel to it. Professionally vetted information — for all its was first openly available — has gone almost entirely behind paywalls as exclusive as the classical languages. Such vetting costs considerable money, much like learning, type-setting and proof-reading classical languages. After a couple of decades, subscription fees have been added to advertising in order that legacy media might cover its overheads and make a profit.
Left behind for the average reader are the popular non-fiction: small freelance “companies” that have sprung up to bring information to the multitudes. Their names suggest the situation: Knewz, MiBolsillo, Benzinga, Money Talks News, Slingshot News, The i Paper, Stockwits, Cryptopolitan. Red Effect, Irish Star, Tagtik. The full list is longer still. Many more such names attach to “news” outlets that feature paid advertising (“sponsored content”) presented as news.
In the spirit of the pamphlets of 400-500 years ago, the best from these venues tends to be brief sensationalized overviews of various pay-walled and social media content, behind sensational hyperlinked headlines, without meaningful vetting or otherwise standards. Spelling and grammar are haphazard. Typos often showing signs of having been dictated into a computer transcription program. It is unwise to believe their information without confirmation from more reputable sources.
Unlike the pamphlets, the new media provides colorful photos rather than colorful word portraits. More and more often, articles are actually slide-shows composed of pictures purchased from the growing number of online image brokers. Accompanying text is severely limited — barely more than a caption — information even moreso. Photos are not specific to the article. It is their job to keep eyes glued to the page and accompanying ads.
It took some 300 years, after Gutenberg, and a good many maimings, deaths, frauds, bankruptcies, and vast amounts of wasted time, for standards to be established for the popular media. How long it will take — if it will be accomplished at all — for the Internet revolution to develop standards to stave off the worst of the glorious and treacherous flood of popular media is an important question. It is hard to believe that we have anywhere near as much time.
Also from the Virtual Vanaprastha:
- Public Health Alert: Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025. February 17, 2025. "It is now running rampant through the body politic furiously working to hollow out its institutions and shift taxation..."
- The American Garden. January 16, 2019. “By 1890, the Ladies' Home Journal was the most popular advertising venue in the country. There, between ads for cook books, children's clothing, stave-less corsets, indoor water-closets, refrigerators and pianos, and popular female columnists who advised the housewife about them all, were a profusion of ads for seeds.”
- Blank Verse Now and Then. January 1, 2019. “Surrey was as erratic as most young noblemen during early English history, and far more brilliant, and was imprisoned several times for temper and intemperance. In the end, he became rather impatient for the gouty, porcine, syphilis-riddled Henry VIII to die, and for the Howard faction to rule as regents to the young, fragile, son conceived of the syphilitic, Edward.”
- The Elegy and the Internet. July 1, 2005. ‘Drummond, we may remember, was the William Drummond, of Hawthornden, who Ben Jonson visited during a trip to Scotland, in 1619. The Scot took the time to jot a memorandum of Jonson's conversation, in which we learn inter alia that "he cursed Petrarch for redacting Verses to Sonnets, which he said were like the Tirrant's bed, wher some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short,"7 and "That Shakspear wanted Arte."’
Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.
Also from Virtual Grub Street:
Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”
A Thousand Years of English Terms. June 2, 2019. ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”. There was no clock to be o’. But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’