Book printing as a cultural event and a way to form an intellectual genome

The text of the article presents an analysis of a number of cultural meanings of printing technologies associated with the name of Johannes Gutenberg, who ushered in the era of mass distribution of European printing - a technological event and one of the first forms of mass production. The role of Gutenberg-Fust technology in the tradition of creating the European book is outlined, the idea of the cultural meaning of this technological event is indicated; The potential of the technology of using movable cast metal type has been revealed. The idea of continuity of European printing technology and the possibilities of the art of glyptics as an achievement of Sumerian culture is outlined. The idea of the so-called intelligent genome is declared as one of the most significant results of the use of movable type technology. By creating the printed book, Gutenberg brought into reality a fundamentally new way of storing and transmitting information. It is argued that, competing with already existing printing technology in the elegance of signs, punch artists created a type of signs not directly related to handwritten samples. As shown in the article, any of the subsequent technological revolutions (the creation of photographic forms, the invention of phototypesetting, the use of computer publishing programs) increasingly differentiated the font and writing material, turning it completely virtual. It is shown that the role of Gutenberg’s technical discovery (both in the culture and in the social life of Europe) cannot be overestimated. The guilds of book copyists were left behind in the era of the printing press, when the work of printers turned into mass work; printing press technologies have provided an unprecedented volume of printed products. The article substantiates the thesis that although Eastern cultures had all the prerequisites necessary for printing, the writing system available in China, Japan, and Korea did not correspond to the mechanical method of printing due to the high complexity of the writing system - the alphabet, being universal and simple, had Compared to complex writing systems, it has the advantage of having a limited number of symbols to fully represent the entire phonetic spectrum. The absence of an alphabetic writing system in the culture of the East gave Gutenberg enormous advantages. The advantages, as noted, were that the material culture of Europe was familiar with the idea of the press. Essential for understanding the idea of the cultural meanings of Gutenberg’s technological discovery is the idea substantiated in the article of why book printing technologies came to the world of Islam four centuries later. The author explains this by the unusually developed traditions of copying in Islamic culture, the status of calligraphy as the highest of the arts, as well as the dogma of Islam on the nature of truth. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

Keywords

Authors

References