The Gutenberg Parenthesis

The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet

Jeff Jarvis

To help us understand our transition out of the Gutenberg Age, Jeff Jarvis presents a history of print and its technologies – of its spread, of print inventions such as the modern novel, the essay, the newspaper, and of attempts to control speech through censorship and copyright.

The five-century-long age of print was a grand exception in history. It gave rise to a worldview which some call print culture – shaped according to the completeness, permanence, materiality, authorship, and authority of text. As print and its influence on every aspect of life is now eclipsed by new technologies – the internet and data – the contrast between these eras gives us the opportunity to better understand print’s presumptions.

This captivating, profound, challenging, and ultimately optimistic saga contends that we are returning to a time before mass media, to a society built on conversation, and that we are relearning how to hold that conversation with ourselves. Drawing upon the work of scores of scholars in book history, technology, sociology, religion, literature, law, media, and design, The Gutenberg Parenthesis examines print’s age on a grand scale and challenges readers to learn its lessons as we design the internet and society of our future.

Jeff Jarvis is Leonard Tow Professor of Journalism

Innovation and Director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York, USA. He is the Creator and Founding Manager Editor of Entertainment Weekly and has been a media columnist at The Guardian, TV Critic and Development Editor at TV Guide, Associate Publisher and Sunday Editor at the New York Daily News, TV Critic and Associate Editor at People, and columnist and editor at the San Francisco Examiner and the Chicago Tribune. He is the author of numerous books, the most recent of which is: Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News (2014).

27th July 2023 | 328 pages

Hardback 9781501394829 | £20 ePub 9781501394843 | £18 ePDF 9781501394850 | £18

Bloomsbury Academic