What follows is an interview and discussion I had in Odense, Denmark, with Thomas Pettitt and Lars Ole Sauerberg, two scholars at the University of Southern Denmark, who made a splash in digital media circles with their theory of the “Gutenberg Parenthesis,” the idea that the digital age, rather than solely a leap into the future, also marks a return to practices and ways of thinking that were central to human societies before Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th century invention changed human literacy and the world.
The era that preceded Gutenberg’s invention, the theory goes, was a time of fluidity and “orality”—speeches, plays, songs, and other communications, including news—that weren’t written down, but instead were ephemeral and uncontained, easily shared, manipulated, and changed by each person who experienced them. The printing press, the authors contend, for the first time on a mass scale introduced the idea of fixity, permanence, and “containment.” Ideas were now impressed on a page and literally “bound” forever—essentially unalterable and thus given a new authority, whether it was deserved or not, that oral communication didn’t have.
The technological change led to nothing less than a change in human experience itself, the scholars say, and paved the way for new ways of looking at the world that emphasized separateness and authority: individualism, nation states, etc. The “parenthesis” idea sees the digital age as bringing about a return to earlier, more fluid, less permanent, more connected, modes of communication, and, indeed, of being. Good summaries of the idea are contained in, oops, flow through Megan Garber’s good post for Nieman Lab from 2010 and a discussion at MIT the same year. (ADDING: a recently revised new paper by Pettitt on parenthesis theory’s implications for privacy is here.) I push back a bit toward the bottom. This Q&A took place last November, which is not that long ago when you think, as we do, in five-hundred-year chunks. (ADDING: Painstakingly transcribed by Peter Sterne,) Iit has been extensively edited but is still purposely long and rambling, as befitting free-flowing communication modes in the post-Gutenberg era. Best read with some lute music in the background.
Dean Starkman: The thing that first got me interested in the Gutenberg Parenthesis idea was learning that Thomas wasn’t a futurist, like a lot of media thinkers, but a medievalist.
Thomas Pettitt: Well it turns out that in some ways they’re the same thing, aren’t they? We are not just moving upwards and onwards, we are moving upwards and backwards. Even though it’s going to be much more technologically sophisticated from now on than it was 50 years ago, in many ways, we are going back to the way things were long before. This is the definition of a “parentheses.” It’s an idea, which interrupts an ongoing idea, and when the interruption’s over, the ongoing idea comes back.
With the right spelling, “media studies” is contained within “mediaeval studies”. One of those neat cabbalistic things that means nothing in itself but is useful for making you think: a medievalist can be a futurist because the Gutenberg Parenthesis tells us the future is medieval.
DS: Got it. One of the important distinctions to think about is, there’s sort of a concept of return, but not a “revolution” in the literal sense, as in revolving 360 degrees to the beginning.
Sauerberg: They are both revolutions, but the second revolution is reversing the first.
DS: But “revolution” isn’t quite right because that turns you to the point where you began.
Pettitt: We’ve played with “return”. We’ve played with the notion of going back where we started—“reversion.” That sounds like we’re going all the way back. If our computers all go dead and we have to start using pen and paper again, that will be a reversion. My current favorite word is “restoration.” So you are restoring the way things were before. Like the Restoration of the monarchy in England after the Civil War. A restoration where things had nonetheless changed in the interim.
Sauerberg: And kept changing.
DS: What’s the mode of communication that existed before the printing press that you think is now being restored?
"I expect citizens would tend to rely on the most legitimate public officials for news, trusting especially what the White House sent their way."
So the folks at CJR would rely on President Bush's word? And Rush Limbaugh's listeners' Obama's?
People will listen to what they want to hear - those who already agree with them. The Balkinization of opinion will continue, and likely worsen. Legitimacy is irrelevant, and those caught making false statements - like Dan Rather - are held up as heroes.
There is literally not a single news source, right or left, that is trustworthy today. It's all about enforcing The Narrative. Perhaps we are all Homer after all?
#1 Posted by Jayat, CJR on Sat 8 Jun 2013 at 09:56 AM
This is nonsense on stilts. It's as if nothing happened before about 900 CE. The only reference to an earlier period is to Homer. In the ancient west alone, how about: public inscriptions of laws and edicts on stone, with punishments prescribed for anyone who moved or defaced them; private inscriptions, such as curses, on metal (ever heard the phrase 'aere perennius'?); the disputes about the authentic and correct texts of the dramatists, Homer, etc. amongst grammarians from the 3rd c. BCE, of those of the founders of the school amongst Epicureans from the 2nd c. BCE, and of those of Plato and Aristotle amongst Academics & Peripatetics from the 2nd c. CE; Galen's complaints in the 2nd c. CE that people were circulating early works of his without his permission, and works not his under his name; and the vast numbers of papyri that have survived, preserving everything from private letters to New Comedy (and Epicurus). We even have writing tablets from Vindolanda. The "orality" of ancient Greek culture and the transition to literacy has been a topos for decades. (This is off the top of my head, by the way. Nothing fancy.) On the other hand, early printed editions of books often present very different texts. The number of "ephemeral" political pamphlets produced in Britain from the 17th c. on is staggering. In short, these authors seem to be peddlng a piece of fiction; so it's probably appropriate that its title would assign it to the Ludlum Corpus.
#2 Posted by Cat, CJR on Sat 8 Jun 2013 at 02:04 PM