Thursday, September 20, 2012

Gutenberg on Video [sic]

We're going to screen most of these videos today in class. You can preview them if you like, or if you have a little extra time. I'm continually struck at how much wonderful material relating to print culture history is readily available on the internet. Of course, with this abundance of great information comes rafts of inaccurate pseudo-scholarship. Lest we think that the nature of digital platforms itself is to blame, we should remember that print was in a very similar situation at its inauguration in the mid-15th century. Inaccuracy as well as outright duplicity is an enduring and unavoidable feature of textual production and transmission.Think of all the garbage that has been printed and bound in books over the past 550 years. Excuse the turn-of-phrase, but the rise of the internet looks like another chapter in the same book rather than another book altogether.

On to the videos...

How do you spell that?

Gutenberg Museum in Mainz

Historical reenactment of the birth of printing

Rough Handling

How do you spell this?

500 years later, printing at the GPO

"We don't know where we are," says sad professor

Gutenberg: the original tech-geek

Gutenberg, the Musical!

Gutenberg as "Sunday Girl"

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