The Gutenberg Parenthesis traces the epoch of print from its fateful beginnings to our digital
present - and draws out lessons for the age to come. The age of print is a grand exception in
history. For five centuries it fostered what some call print culture - a worldview shaped by
the completeness permanence and authority of the printed word. As a technology print at its
birth was as disruptive as the digital migration of today. Now as the internet ushers us past
print culture journalist Jeff Jarvis offers important lessons from the era we leave behind. To
understand our transition out of the Gutenberg Age Jarvis first examines the transition into
it. Tracking Western industrialized print to its origins he explores its invention spread
and evolution as well as the bureaucracy and censorship that followed. He also reveals how
print gave rise to the idea of the mass - mass media mass market mass culture mass politics
and so on - that came to dominate the public sphere. What can we glean from the captivating
profound and challenging history of our devotion to print? Could it be that we are returning
to a time before mass media to a society built on conversation and that we are relearning how
to hold that conversation with ourselves? Brimming with broader implications for today's
debates over communication authorship and ownership Jarvis' exploration of print on a grand
scale is also a complex compelling history of technology and power.
