Five hundred and fifty years ago, German printer Johan Gutenberg' invention, the printing press, created one of the world's first social inventions, the retention of knowledge. In 1456, his publication of the world's first book, the Christian Bible, could be claimed as the conception of the Communications Age. The book spread around our planet and changed the lives of the human race.
Just over 130 years ago, another star lit the lamp of time. American inventor Thomas Alva Edison, gave the world the incandescent lamp and many other 19th and 20th century wonders.
But fame for Gutenberg has begun to fade. Though lasting through decades of transmitting information via tom-toms, smoke signals, semaphore flags, heliograph, telegraph and telex, only during the dying days of the 20th century did an upstart called Internet threaten Gutenberg domination of communication. Radio hadn't done it, nor television. But Internet blossomed on fertile soil and in the right season. But it still, in most cases transmitted information that resulted in the same old dull dry static print on dead trees.
During the last half-decade of the millennium, known in the western world as the Second, the World Wide Web (WWW) was laid over the tracks laid by the Internet. Within months the Internet went from mere text to fast cuts and colorful, dynamic visuals. The world changed again. Big time.
The Web has expanded to the following figures just as Year 2000 came on stage:
World Total 248.6 million
Africa 2.36 million
Asia/Pacific 42.6 million
Europe 64.23 million
Middle East 1.29 million
Canada & USA 131.1 million
South America 7.10 million
Source: Various; Methodology
Compiled by Nua Internet Surveys
No communications system has ever grown so fast. Not radio, not television.
The Web, along with its original text-only parent, the Internet, started moving data, info and visuals into forms that didn't have to reside on paper. Now hard discs, optical discs and crystals the size of sugar cubes will be storing what was once restricted to paper. Just in time. Most paper, made by an industrial process using either acid or alkaline, is starting to break down in books printed in the modern method. Some books printed in the days when linen rags made up a sizeable segment of the pulp that included the leaves of the Egyptian papyrus bush and/or those of the marijuana plant are still surviving after 200 years. But these are few and do not contain the majority of knowledge accumulated in the last two centuries.
My Apple G4 "home computer" with its Cinema Display Screen will become popular in the years to come. It provides up to 20 gigabytes (expandable) of fast, inexpensive, compact, reliable and almost instantly available storage space. Unheard of a few years ago.
We have long been working towards the paperless office. Now that dream may become reality. Data acquired, analyzed, corrected, modified, disseminated, stored again at both sending and receiving locations -- without the use of paper in any of the operations.
Already on the horizon is another crusher: Everybook. A book with the potential to hold every book in the world. In every language. My prototype is leather-bound, 12 inches high, nine inches wide and two inches thick. When opened, two touch-sensitive screens through the use of icons, allow you to summon the fiction and fact of the world. Gutenberg would have been proud.
Check out their website: www.everybook.net
It also looks like the Encyclopedia Britannica had some inside knowledge. They have stopped sales of their 29-volume Gutenberg-format consumer library and "gone digital" on the Web. It may also be time for a new musical score, "Good bye Gutenberg".
And what about Edison? That's another column. But here's a hint. Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs)
