Changes in Print Culture

            Here in the 21^st century, things are changing more rapidly now than they have at any other time in the history of our world. In just the last decade, we have seen the rise of the smart phone, a communication device that almost everyone has now that did not even exist a decade ago.  These changes in technology have also impacted how we communicate and access news. Nowadays, social media sites like Facebook have hundreds of millions of users and have eclipsed newspapers in terms of being a primary source for news updates. We must ask, though, where did print technology start? Stone tablets? Cave drawings? Goose flesh? And which advances in technology had the greatest impacts?

            Over the millennia print culture has seen countless changes, but I’d argue that the greatest changes came with the creation of the printing press and the advent of the Internet. For the longest time, people were forced to use primitive materials, and everything had to be done by hand. That changed with the invention of the printing press. It made both copying and distributing information far more efficient. Eventually, it lowered the costs of books, making literacy more prevalent, which also birthed things like pamphlets and newspapers. Rises in literacy and a better-informed population ultimately led to major strides in societal advancement. Centuries later, the landscape of print culture was rocked, this time by the Internet. It connected people with information and other people from around the world. It also granted us all of the information we could get from physical news sources but at a much faster rate, ultimately leading to the decline of physical newspapers and books. Of course, with all of these strides have also come certain problems. As mentioned previously, physical news sources have met their decline.  After being a staple in print culture for so long, it’s sad to see this shift. As we mentioned in class, newspapers have seen a 40% decline in subscriptions, and the only newspapers that are thriving are found in small towns. Also, we are having a problem with the quality vs. quantity of the information available to us.  Typically millions of sources will come up with a simple Google search, but the majority of them offer little in terms of substance. Ultimately, it’s almost impossible to list all of the benefits that have arisen from advances in technology, but at times it is sad seeing what has been lost or outdated.