Gutenberg’s press rocked the world. It was an innovation that had far-reaching effects. I would dare say no one truly knew what it meant. It meant that culture and industry and human communication had been forever altered- it was a technological bomb that dealt a death blow to the old world of the elitists’ power over ideas and information and ushered in the new world of mass communication for the common ‘man’. So here we are, children of Gutenberg’s revolution, standing at the new ground zero of cultural and societal change. Here we are at the crust of this new shift- this time the personal computer, enabled by ‘the internet’ is center stage. And here we stand blogging, surfing, bookmarking, linking, networking, IMing, emailing on our digital presses-harvesting and sowing vast oceans of information. I wonder if we know what it means? Current blogging services and software, as well as online social networks, represent a new shift. The common ‘man’ not only has been deluged by the swelling floodgates of new ideas and information (as in Gutenberg’s time), but now the common ‘man’ is the maker of the deluge. -JDF
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