| Play from beginning |
| 00:00:00 | Interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan |
| 00:00:05 | The printing press was a remarkable
democratising technology. |
| 00:00:09 | The printing press allowed for
immediate unregulated distribution |
| 00:00:15 | of some fairly influental documents. |
| 00:00:19 | You could actually think of Luther's work
as being the original |
| 00:00:23 | subject of peer-to-peer distribution. |
| 00:00:26 | Luther's theeses were not meant for European-wide
distribution, not even German distribution. |
| 00:00:32 | They were meant for his parish
and group of clergy and yet |
| 00:00:37 | immediately people made unauthorized copies
and distributed them around Europe. |
| 00:00:41 | So that stands as sort of
the first example of the dynamic effects |
| 00:00:47 | of disruptive communicative technologies. |
| 00:00:50 | Within a short period of time both the church
and the nation states that were emerging in Europe |
| 00:00:58 | gained control over printing to a large degree. |
| 00:01:02 | Licensing presses, making sure that distribution
was highly regulated and controlled, |
| 00:01:08 | and once again capturing the most important
parts of information flow. |
| 00:01:15 | Of course they didn't do a perfect job, |
| 00:01:18 | which is why historical change
continued through the next few centuries. |
| 00:01:22 | So it wasn't and instantaneous revolution,
but one that was certainly |
| 00:01:28 | influential enough to leave its mark on the world. |
| 00:01:31 | Several things happened after the printing press
showed its powerful influence. |
| 00:01:37 | First the catholic church certainly
did its best to undermine many of |
| 00:01:44 | Luther's claims and Calvin's claims. |
| 00:01:47 | And did its best to enforce its control
over the states over which it was |
| 00:01:54 | heavily influential, but also do its best
to clean up certain practices, like indulgences and so forth. |
| 00:01:59 | But more importantly all of the
emerging nation states of Europe |
| 00:02:06 | made it very clear that they would control
information flows to the best of their ability. |
| 00:02:11 | They started processes such as licensing
printing presses and licensing printers, |
| 00:02:18 | giving specific grants
to specific printers for specific books, |
| 00:02:23 | which is the sort of early predecessor to copyright. |
| 00:02:26 | And by doing this they made sure
that the books that flowed throughout society |
| 00:02:31 | were authorized
- were the authorized editions - but also |
| 00:02:35 | were within the control of the state,
within control of the king, or the prince. |
| 00:02:40 | And that had a tremendous effect
on limiting political change or |
| 00:02:46 | putting the breaks on political change
for a number of centuries. |
| 00:02:49 | It didn't stop the ideas from flowing
and the principles of open communication |
| 00:02:55 | remained as an ideal right through the enlightenment |
| 00:02:58 | through the revolutions of the 18th century as well. |
| 00:03:01 | The printing press certainly had the effect of disengaging |
| 00:03:06 | communication from a specific time and place. |
| 00:03:09 | Deterritorializing it,
taking a message out of its particular cultural context, |
| 00:03:15 | its liveness, and distributing it widely
in a way that would render it as pure information. |
| 00:03:24 | This had a tremendous effect on
how people thought of themselves, |
| 00:03:27 | how people thought of the human project. |
| 00:03:33 | It gave people the opportunity
to actually think of themselves as |
| 00:03:36 | members of larger community than the local. |
| 00:03:39 | They could think of themselves as french,
or german, or european, or as a citizen of the world, |
| 00:03:45 | right up through the notion
that you could actually have |
| 00:03:51 | empathy for someone suffering in China. |
| 00:03:53 | And it was really only through
the printing press that we could |
| 00:03:56 | imagine ourselves in contact with people so far away. |
| 00:04:00 | I'm actually fond of a phrase that comes out
of a Disney corporate culture called 'imagineering.' |
| 00:04:06 | Certain inventions, many inventions in fact,
alter our imagination. |
| 00:04:11 | They are not just examples of engineering,
they're examples of imagineering. |
| 00:04:14 | So when you have something
like the printing press in your town, |
| 00:04:18 | and it's having an affect on daily life,
it opens up a series of possibilities that were |
| 00:04:24 | not imaginable just the day before. |
| 00:04:28 | The rise of network communication,
the installation of TCIP/IP, |
| 00:04:31 | the notion that through this small box
you can be in real-time contact with a friend in Djakarta |
| 00:04:39 | no matter where you live, a friend in Vancouver,
a friend in Santiago. |
| 00:04:43 | That's actually a pretty profound change in consciousness. |
| 00:04:49 | It's not a change that has touched billions
of people around the world, |
| 00:04:52 | but it certainly has touched hundreds of thousands
of people around the world. |
| 00:04:55 | And certainly altered our expectations. |
| 00:04:59 | We expect different things out of our daily lifes,
expect different things out of our |
| 00:05:05 | commercial relationships,
our cultural relationships. |
| 00:05:07 | If we are members of diasporic communities
we expect to be able to stay in touch with the |
| 00:05:13 | cultural changes, the film and music of our origin |
| 00:05:16 | If we are members of a political community
we expect to be able to forge alliances |
| 00:05:21 | with people in Australia and South Africa,
as well as Canada, the United States or England. |
| 00:05:26 | And that's a remarkable change. |
| 00:05:28 | It opens up so many possibilities,
it doesn't determine any particular possibility. |
| 00:05:33 | So it's a mistake to say that because of network communication,
things will be a certain way. |
| 00:05:38 | Just as it was a mistake to suggest that
the reformation, the enlightenment |
| 00:05:43 | and the subsequent revolutions in Europe
necessarily followed from the printing press. |
| 00:05:48 | The printing press was a condition of that,
but it wasn't the sole determination, |
| 00:05:53 | determinant of that. |
| 00:05:55 | Technologies work in a way that often
create unintended consequences in history. |
| 00:06:01 | Technologies work in a way
most importantly to open up |
| 00:06:05 | possibilities that were not imaginable before.
That can be profound. |
| 00:06:13 | But sometimes it only gets rendered in science-fiction
and it doesn't happen in the real world. |
