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Interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan

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The printing press was a remarkable 
democratising technology. 

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The printing press allowed for 
immediate unregulated distribution

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of some fairly influental documents.

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You could actually think of Luther's work 
as being the original

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subject of peer-to-peer distribution.

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Luther's theeses were not meant for European-wide 
distribution, not even German distribution.

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They were meant for his parish 
and group of clergy and yet

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immediately people made unauthorized copies
and distributed them around Europe.

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So that stands as sort of 
the first example of the dynamic effects

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of disruptive communicative technologies.

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Within a short period of time both the church 
and the nation states that were emerging in Europe

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gained control over printing to a large degree.

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Licensing presses, making sure that distribution
was highly regulated and controlled,

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and once again capturing the most important 
parts of information flow.

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Of course they didn't do a perfect job, 

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which is why historical change
continued through the next few centuries.

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So it wasn't and instantaneous revolution, 
but one that was certainly

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influential enough to leave its mark on the world.

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Several things happened after the printing press 
showed its powerful influence.

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First the catholic church certainly 
did its best to undermine many of

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Luther's claims and Calvin's claims.

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And did its best to enforce its control 
over the states over which it was

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heavily influential, but also do its best 
to clean up certain practices, like indulgences and so forth.

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But more importantly all of the
emerging nation states of Europe

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 made it very clear that they would control
 information flows to the best of their ability.

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 They started processes such as licensing
 printing presses and licensing printers,

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giving specific grants
 to specific printers for specific books,

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which is the sort of early predecessor to copyright.

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And by doing this they made sure 
that the books that flowed throughout society

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 were authorized 
- were the authorized editions - but also 

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were within the control of the state, 
within control of the king, or the prince.

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And that had a tremendous effect 
on limiting political change or

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putting the breaks on political change 
for a number of centuries.

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It didn't stop the ideas from flowing 
and the principles of open communication

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remained as an ideal right through the enlightenment

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through the revolutions of the 18th century as well.

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The printing press certainly had the effect of disengaging 

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communication from a specific time and place.

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Deterritorializing it, 
taking a message out of its particular cultural context,

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its liveness, and distributing it widely 
in a way that would render it as pure information.

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This had a tremendous effect on 
how people thought of themselves,  

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how people thought of the human project.

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It gave people the opportunity 
to actually think of themselves as

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members of larger community than the local.

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They could think of themselves as french, 
or german, or european, or as a citizen of the world,

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right up through the notion 
that you could actually have

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 empathy for someone suffering in China.

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And it was really only through 
the printing press that we could

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imagine ourselves in contact with people so far away.

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I'm actually fond of a phrase that comes out 
of a Disney corporate culture called 'imagineering.'

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Certain inventions, many inventions in fact, 
alter our imagination. 

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They are not just examples of engineering, 
they're examples of imagineering. 

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So when you have something 
like the printing press in your town,

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and it's having an affect on daily life, 
it opens up a series of possibilities that were

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not imaginable just the day before.

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The rise of network communication, 
the installation of TCIP/IP,

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the notion that through this small box 
you can be in real-time contact with a friend in Djakarta

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no matter where you live, a friend in Vancouver, 
a friend in Santiago.

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That's actually a pretty profound change in consciousness.

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It's not a change that has touched billions 
of people around the world,

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but it certainly has touched hundreds of thousands 
of people around the world.

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 And certainly altered our expectations. 

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We expect different things out of our daily lifes,
 expect different things out of our

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commercial relationships, 
our cultural relationships.

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If we are members of diasporic communities 
we expect to be able to stay in touch with the

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cultural changes, the film and music of our origin

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If we are members of a political community 
we expect to be able to forge alliances

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with people in Australia and South Africa, 
as well as Canada, the United States or England.

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And that's a remarkable change.

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It opens up so many possibilities, 
it doesn't determine any particular possibility.

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So it's a mistake to say that because of network communication, 
things will be a certain way.

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Just as it was a mistake to suggest that 
the reformation, the enlightenment

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and the subsequent revolutions in Europe 
necessarily followed from the printing press.

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The printing press was a condition of that,
 but it wasn't the sole determination,

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determinant of that.

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Technologies work in a way that often 
create unintended consequences in history.

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Technologies work in a way 
most importantly to open up 

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possibilities that were not imaginable before. 
That can be profound.

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But sometimes it only gets rendered in science-fiction 
and it doesn't happen in the real world.