Eisenstein 1983

"If there was a 'run-away' tecnology which was leading to a sense of cultural crisis among historians, perhaps it had more to do with an increased rate of publication than with new audiovisual media? While mulling over this question and wondering whether it was wise to turn out more monographs or instruct graduate students to do the sme -- given the indigestible abundance now confronting us and the diffuclty of assimilating what we have -- I ran across a copy of Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy. ... It provided additional evidence of how overload could lead to incoherence. At the same time it also stimulated my curiosity ... about the specific historical consequences of the c15 communications shift." (x)

• interesting question to begin text with!

implores reader to "keep in mind the tentative, provisional character" of the book," and points out it addresses shift from one kind of literate culture to another, not from orality to literacy (xii)

"As the title of my large version indicates,I regard printing as an agent, not the agent, let alone the only agent, of change in Western Europe." (xiii)

An Unacknowledged Revolution

difficulty of understanding a medium so embedded in our scholarly practices

"In order to assess changes ushered in by printing, for example, we need to survey the conditions that prevailed before its advent. Yet the conditions of scribal culture can only be observed through a veil of print." (6)

Johannes Trithemius, De laude scriptorum (1492)

• explains why mongs should not stop copying because of invention of printing
• argues writing on parchment will have longer life than printing on paper
• "his argument show his concern about preserving a form of manual labor which seemed especiallys uitable for monks." (11)