Sunday
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3/25/05
One Less Voice
It was right around the year 1045 that a Chinese blacksmith and alchemist by the name of Pi Sheng had a great idea. Rather than have printers go though the laborious process of carving whole wooden blocks for each page they produced, Pi Sheng thought to himself, why not just carve up a whole bunch of individual characters that can be affixed to a plate and then simply rearranged at will for the next page.
"Great," he must have thought to himself. "This new system of... um... I know! This new 'moveable type' will revolutionize the printing process and forever change the way information is produced and distributed!" And indeed it did.
Oh but hell, let's just admit to our xenophobic western-European selves that we couldn't care less about what those funny little people were doing on the other side of the planet a thousand years ago. Nope, for us its all about Gutenberg and his bibles. It is, after all, much more pleasant to imagine that he came along four hundred some-odd years later and really invented moveable type. Sort of like rooting for the home team. Or something like that.
Anyway, regardless of who was doing what or when they were doing it, here we stand at the dawn of the third millennium in a brand-new world in which the internet allows nearly everyone the opportunity to be heard. The politically aware can share their opinions with anyone who cares to listen. Oldsters can muse about the wonders of grandchildren. Youngsters can share the concerns of an upcoming generation. Or, at-home dads can muse about everything from diapers to discipline, or even how blogs are connecting people in ways never before possible. Or they can share a bunch of sanctimonious crap like this. Whichever.
And so what was my point? Darned if I know. It probably had something to do with my realization a few days ago that Drama Queen has thrown in the royal towel and called it quits. Unlike many others who simply allow their blogs to languish much like a pile of unwashed laundry, she's decided to formally end posting.
Actually, I'm really not at all sure why that got me thinking about the whole process of publishing information, knowledge, and ideas. Maybe it's just as simple as that it stikes me as faintly sad when a unique voice in this new medium makes the choice to go silent. Or then again, maybe I'm just a sentimental cretin with a propensity for the melodramatic. Yeah, that's more likely.
But either way, I'm pretty sure that Pi Sheng would be very pleased indeed if he could see what his contribution helped create.
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|
3/25/05
One Less Voice
It was right around the year 1045 that a Chinese blacksmith and alchemist by the name of Pi Sheng had a great idea. Rather than have printers go though the laborious process of carving whole wooden blocks for each page they produced, Pi Sheng thought to himself, why not just carve up a whole bunch of individual characters that can be affixed to a plate and then simply rearranged at will for the next page.
"Great," he must have thought to himself. "This new system of... um... I know! This new 'moveable type' will revolutionize the printing process and forever change the way information is produced and distributed!" And indeed it did.
Oh but hell, let's just admit to our xenophobic western-European selves that we couldn't care less about what those funny little people were doing on the other side of the planet a thousand years ago. Nope, for us its all about Gutenberg and his bibles. It is, after all, much more pleasant to imagine that he came along four hundred some-odd years later and really invented moveable type. Sort of like rooting for the home team. Or something like that.
Anyway, regardless of who was doing what or when they were doing it, here we stand at the dawn of the third millennium in a brand-new world in which the internet allows nearly everyone the opportunity to be heard. The politically aware can share their opinions with anyone who cares to listen. Oldsters can muse about the wonders of grandchildren. Youngsters can share the concerns of an upcoming generation. Or, at-home dads can muse about everything from diapers to discipline, or even how blogs are connecting people in ways never before possible. Or they can share a bunch of sanctimonious crap like this. Whichever.
~ ~ ~
And so what was my point? Darned if I know. It probably had something to do with my realization a few days ago that Drama Queen has thrown in the royal towel and called it quits. Unlike many others who simply allow their blogs to languish much like a pile of unwashed laundry, she's decided to formally end posting.
Actually, I'm really not at all sure why that got me thinking about the whole process of publishing information, knowledge, and ideas. Maybe it's just as simple as that it stikes me as faintly sad when a unique voice in this new medium makes the choice to go silent. Or then again, maybe I'm just a sentimental cretin with a propensity for the melodramatic. Yeah, that's more likely.
But either way, I'm pretty sure that Pi Sheng would be very pleased indeed if he could see what his contribution helped create.
.
