In the century before Gutenberg, and up to 20 years after he published the first Bible, there were around 1,000 Christian monasteries throughout Europe. Each one had about 400 monks. Each monastery produced but ONE BIBLE A YEAR! One Bible a year per monastery didn't lead to widespread knowledge or a chance for most to even learn how to read. Church and state preferred it that way.
By the time Gutenberg finished his first Bible in 1456, he knew they would eventually be able to produce ONE BIBLE A DAY.
A 3,000 percent increase in book production doesn't happen every day. Very quickly those 400,000 monks had to find another raison detre. Scribes basically became unemployed. This was the tip of the iceberg. Bibles, then other books, brought the knowledge of the day to some of the masses. It moved the power of Rome to the people in ways never before dreamed of. Soon the average peasant realized he didn't have to go through an intermediary such as a priest, bishop or pope. People could pray directly to their various gods. The rest is history. It's probably the first clear and recorded example of The Galileo Effect.
OVER ONE MILLION NEW NET SITES were produced during the month of January according to Mike Prettyjohn of netcraft.com the website Survey company.
These are not Internet Users but people who have set up their own new websites within the last 30 days. I estimate that only one person in 75 currently goes through the trouble, expense and learning time zone of creating a personal website (this does include companies). But compare that to creating one Bible a year in a scribeatorium or even one a day in the early printing era of Gutenberg. This massive increase from our cornucopia of information is flooding the planet every second. One million new server sites a month. That's over 30,000 a day! Nothing like this has ever occurred on Planet Earth. Imagine if 30,000 new gas stations or even newsstand coin boxes had been set up in one day.
Now Joan Lunchbucket has access to the knowledge of the world. She can learn directly, self-learn, self-test and self-certify. If she can learn as much as those who spent four years at university, the world becomes her oyster! The Age of Credentialism is fading over the horizon. Talk about a Second Coming!
Web world server sites now exceeds 10 million. Prettyjohn attributes part of "this to the effect of the Christmas period and Year 2000 planning which depressed the numbers of new sites during December, 1999." By comparison, it took until 01 April 97 to reach the first one million website number. What initially took 30 years (360 months) took just one month.
Don't laugh. The latest figures from NUA.com (the Irish surveyor of individuals on the Net) show 275 million people now on the net at least once a month. And for the first time, Internet users outside North America in January 2000 surpassed those in North America: 136.06 million North Americans (U.S. and Canada) and 139.43 million from elsewhere. Another NUA survey reported 27 million individual new Internet aficionados jumped on the www bandwagon in the same month!
This is the GALILEO EFFECT. It will soon effect every individual, family, village, business, government, state, country and continent. The effect will be chaotic to those who have not yet glimpsed the elegant order underlying chaos. But the order is out there. If we live through the chaos, a golden (probably platinum) age may result.
But let's give credit to the backs we stood on to get here: our cave ancestors that found a stick could be a club, and arrow or spear and stone could be slung. Later they communicated by smoke signals, tom-toms and mirrors. A log becomes a canoe and sealskins could make a kayak. Marks on a stone tablet conveyed meaning, knots on a string indicated mounds of grain and scribbling on papyrus was easily carried great distances.
Much later, our ancestors leaned how to handle waterpower, then steam, then electricity, oil and minerals from the ground, gases from the air, and today the treasured invisibles. Almost everything important today is invisible. Communications race through corridors of glass at the speed of light and transform into words, pictures and sound and soon touch. Yet to come? Inputting computers by using thought waves alone.
The opening scene of Arthur C. Clarke's 1970 movie classic, 2001, showed our ancestor who discovered a monolith that intuitively taught him (or her) how to make that stick into a club. Rough way to start, but it worked. Don't get too arrogant when you perform magic via a computer. That guy led the way. His seminal move was the first Galileo Effect.
With thanks to Keith Kingsland of the Toronto-based Decision Support Group for a portion of this concept.
