1.14.16

My how we have come far we have come from the printing press. At a point in history the accessibility of text was only allowed for the wealthy and the religious. But when Gutenberg invented the printing press he not created a system of free thought and a forum to exchange ideas, but also ended the reign of aristocrats possessing knowledge. By being able to produce text in mass quantities made it afforadable for the common man to gain knowledge.

Fast forward to 2016, and not much has changed from that idea.

In "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush he discusses the idea of the memex. This system in which he describes in his article is basically what he see today as a number of things, such as the Internet, and even the Cloud in some cases. With modern technology, we are able to store massive amounts of text ranging from books to even posters on a accessible system that could viewed by anyone who is able to use the Internet. So instead of what Gutenberg did and create mass quantities of one specfic text, an average human being has the ability to create multiple pieces of work in mass quanity. Not only are we able to share these text with the click of a button, we are also able to save them in a multitude of electronic storages, from the simple hard drive located on your laptop to the mystical but ever so helpful Cloud (#blessed).

In Jay Bolter's reading "The Late Age of Print" he discusses the positive contributions that the text has provided and the endless possibility of convergence between different mediums, whether this is through radio and television. As a milenial, this was a refreshing article to read because too much we are reminded how horrible of a generation we are in that we have the attention span of a squirrel. In the text he disccuses the advantage of electronic text being dynamic and having multiple engaging pieces such as moving pictures and even hyperlinks. Information that see you on the websites of news stations, online encylopedia's, and even retail stores include this new way of electronic text.