Quote of the Day | 0209
The idea, for instance, that the printing press rapidly gave birth to a new order of information, democratic and bottom-up, is a cruel cartoon of the truth. If the printing press did propel the Reformation, one of the biggest ideas it propelled was Luther’s newly invented absolutist anti-Semitism. And what followed the Reformation wasn’t the Enlightenment, a new era of openness and freely disseminated knowledge. What followed the Reformation was, actually, the Counter-Reformation, which used the same means-i.e., printed books-to spread ideas about what jerks the reformers were, and unleashed a hundred years of religious warfare.
Adam Gopnik, ‘How the Internet Gets Inside Us’
[x]#8252 fan woensdag 9 februari 2011 @ 13:38:34
