IN 1998, The Rand Corporation, an American global policy think tank, published a paper on the parallels between the Printing Revolution and the Information Age from which emerged the digital revolution.1 The comparison was a reasonable one: both revolutions saw the democratisation of knowledge, facilitated by the mass production and distribution of information at a lower cost to the public; and both prompted social and scientific progress that would otherwise have been unimaginable. The paper also predicted the implications of the Information Age to be as profound as those of the Printing Revolution, warning of a “dark side” to this development.2
The Influence of the Printing Press on Digital Revolution
Mainstream discussions about the Printing Revolution generally revolve around its role as a precursor to paradigm shifts and social changes that led to transformative historical events such as the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Protestant Reformation. Few talk about its less desirable consequences, e.g. having put “information, misinformation, and power in the hands of more people than ever before.”3
