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Ben Franklin Didn't Quite Get it Right
When Ben Franklin said "a penny saved is a penny earned", he didn't quite get it right. Actually, a penny saved is worth more than a penny earned. Do you find this statement shocking? I am about to prove to you that what I'm saying is true. Most...
Good News in Our Brave New World
As the year 2001 winds into its final quarter, it is safe to say we're not in the 20th century any more. The unprecedented long cycle of prosperity we enjoyed in the 90's led many to believe that we were experiencing a new economy; one that was...
Google Slavery...Old Habits Die Hard
For the first few months after Yahoo decided to go their own way with natural search (and MSN decided to get serious about the search business), the search results provided by those two could only be described as bizarre. Enough time has now...
OIL DEMAND and the effects on the Global Stock Market
HOOKED ON CRUDE OIL, THE REAL STORY.
Without oil, the world shuts down. We burn through 27 Billion
barrels per year. Even 90% of the chemicals we use for farming,
making drugs and making plastics... all come from oil. It's a
habit we can't...
The Wages of Science - Part II
In the absence of efficient capital markets and adventuresome capitalists, some developing countries have taken this propensity to extremes. In the Philippines, close to 100 percent of all R&D is government-financed. The meltdown of foreign direct...
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Print and Modern thought
The scientific revolution that would later challenge the entrenched "truths" espoused by the Church was also largely a consequence of print technology. The scientific principle of repeatability--the impartial verification of experimental results-- grew out of the rapid and broad dissemination of scientific insights and discoveries that print allowed. The production of scientific knowledge accelerated markedly. The easy exchange of ideas gave rise to a scientific community that functioned without geographical constraints. This made it possible to systematize methodologies and to add sophistication to the development of rational thought. As readily available books helped expand the collective body of knowledge, indexes and cross-referencing emerged as ways of managing volumes of information and of making creative associations between seemingly unrelated ideas.
Innovations in the convenience of knowledge and the formation of human thought that attended the rise of print in Europe also influenced art, literature, philosophy and politics.
The introduction of print material adds up to the large and rises of different fields of endeavor. Thus, the explosive innovation that characterized the Renaissance was amplified, if not in part generated by, the printing press. The rigidly fixed class structure which determined one's status from birth based on family property ownership began to yield to the rise of an intellectual middle class. The possibility of changing one's status infused the less privileged with ambition and a hunger for education.
Print technology facilitated a communications revolution that reached deep into human modes of thought and social interaction. Print, along with spoken language, writing and electronic media, is thought of as one of the markers of key historical shifts in communication that have
attended social and intellectual transformation. Oral culture is passed from one generation to the next through the full sensory and emotional atmosphere of interpersonal interaction. Writing facilitates interpretation and reflection since memorization is no longer required for the communication and processing of ideas. Recorded history could persist and be added to through the centuries. Written manuscripts sparked a variation on the oral tradition of communal story-telling--it became common for one person to read out loud to the group.
Print, on the other hand, encouraged the pursuit of personal privacy. Less expensive and more portable books lent themselves to solitary and silent reading. This orientation to privacy was part of an emphasis on individual rights and freedoms that print helped to develop. Print injected Western culture with the principles of standardization, verifiability and communication that comes from one source and is disseminated to many geographically dispersed receivers. As illustrated by dramatic reform in religious thought and scientific inquiry, print innovations helped bring about sharp challenges to institutional control. Print facilitated a focus on fixed, verifiable truth, and on the human ability and right to choose one's own intellectual and religious path.
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About the Author
Well actually i'm not fun of writing, i dont write at all. i am not expecting that i will be in this field. But i love to read books...almost everything interest me. reading is my passion! but now that i am in an article writer team, writing gives me an additional thrill in myself...Before i love to read books but now im also in a writing stuff. I can't say im a good writer but i am trying to be one.
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