The Democratization of Knowledge

Knowledge is power. The truth of that statement is pretty easy to demonstrate: if you know everything, then you have everything you want, because you know exactly what you have to do to get it. Less knowledge, then, is less power. Generally speaking, when more people have power, there’s less abuse of power, because it’s not as highly concentrated at the top. If knowledge is power, then, it’s important to have as many knowledgeable people as we can. You may wonder what this has to do with print shops; let me explain.

Today, we have the Internet, one of the greatest democratizers of knowledge we’ve ever seen. Before the Internet Revolution, though, we had the Printing Revolution, which began in the early 15th century. Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, is considered one of the most influential people of the last millenium, if not the most important. It’s widely held that the invention of the printing press, allowing dissemination of knowledge across such a large number of people, is the chief reason we had the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and all of the other large scale social changes we’ve experienced since the 1400s. One of the most important influences the press had was the printing of documents in a country’s native language instead of in Latin. To learn Latin, you need the wealth and influence to be able to take years of schooling, while local languages could be read by people with less education. That meant the common class could learn, which in turn meant more educated people.

The printing press also led to the widespread dissemination of information about local goings on, in the form of the newspaper. The number of newspapers exploded in the 15th century, and growth of the press increased substantially as time went on. There’s a distinct possibility that these newspapers made citizens more aware of corruption and scandal within their governments, prompting them to take action. Such informed citizen action could be seen in the American Revolution, where Patriots published newspapers advising the American colonists of perceived abuses of power by Great Britain. One of the important things to recognize with early printing presses is that the folks who controlled the presses controlled the information, so while democratization was occuring, parts of it were still held by those who were wealthy enough to own presses.

The ability to print something remains powerful to this day. There’s evidence that we retain knowledge better when we’ve read it from a page; something about the tangible nature of holding something and reading it helps us learn. Printing has also come a long way since the 15th century, and we can print in bold colours on large documents, use digital printing to create customizable products, and more. Knowledge is power, and with printing, that power is in your hands; use it well.