CS100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Written Language, Middle Ages, Woodblock Printing
Document Summary
Themes re-occurring: dissemination of knowledge thorough new media. The importance of keeping track : writing is direction connected to power (knowledge is held in the hands of power/authority) Written language allows for the connection of written knowledge. Everything that is known in the world is only known if it is repeatable. Complicated ideas in your head in an oral culture, it is going to be received through the nature of sound which is a (((femorality???)) once it is heard it is gone. Before the printing press: the middle ages (circa 5th-15th centuries, emergent national monarchies, expansion, the church and monopolies of knowledge. By the 12th and 13th centuries: glimmers of the secularization of knowledge. In other words, the printing press is part of : a process of dynamic change, not a series of disruptions (did the world change utterly in 1450?) ( we"ll circle back to this question toward the end of today"s lecture)
