Printing Revolution Research Articles

American Little Magazines of the 1890s: A Revolution in Print

American Little Magazines of the 1890s: A Revolution in Print

The Factors that determine the Symbolism of the Future Trendsetter Industrial Designers in 3D Printing Revolution - Extracting the meaningful design factors from the industrial designers enlightened by William Morris Arts and Crafts Movement -

The Factors that determine the Symbolism of the Future Trendsetter Industrial Designers in 3D Printing Revolution - Extracting the meaningful design factors from the industrial designers enlightened by William Morris Arts and Crafts Movement -

Confronting a New Era of Duplicationn? 3D Printing, Replicating Technology and the Search for Authenticity in George O. Smith's Venus Equilateral Series

The focus of this paper is on the potential challenges and opportunities that might emerge as a result of the continuing development and proliferation of so-called 3D printing technology. In particular, it is interested in looking at how society would cope if 3D printing (or some other form of comparable replicating technology) advanced to such a stage that it became possible to accurately and cheaply replicate any commodity or currency-form many times over. As many readers will no doubt be aware, these are issues that have gained increased traction in recent times, with countless articles and opinion-pieces having been printed on the so-called ‘3D printing revolution’ in the last couple of years. However, whilst the technology underpinning the latest cluster of 3D printers may be ground-breaking, the idea itself is far from new. Indeed, the concept of replicating technology actually has a fairly long intellectual history, with a number of past writers and thinkers having devoted a great deal of time to considering the effects that might result from the (potential) emergence of mass 3D printing capabilities. In this paper, the focus will be on one such text; namely, George O. Smith’s Venus Equilateral series (1942-1945). Looking both at the fictionalised replicating technologies outlined by Smith and the uses they were put to by his protagonists, this paper will offer a critical reading of Smith’s work, with a particular emphasis on his treatment of the 3D printing phenomenon. Likewise, it will also look at how Smith tried to incorporate the idea of mass replicating technology into a wider socio-economic framework, along with his attempts to produce working economic models based on this postulated mode of production. Ultimately, what it shows is that, whilst Smith’s fictionalised technologies may today seem farcically outdated, his reflections and insights on the potential social ruptures and cultural transformations that might unfold as a result of the emergence of mass replicating technology remain as pertinent and as relevant as ever.

The liability of website owners for defamation in Israel: A challenge yet to be solved?

From the end of the twentieth century to the present we have witnessed the effects of technology on the way we consume and distribute information. The print media, which in many ways was the natural product of the printing revolution, has given way to the electronic media with websites providing the new “town squares” in which the public discourse is held on political, economic and social issues among others. The Israeli legal system, like the legal systems in other countries, faces a variety of challenges and complex ethical and legal issues when required to regulate (often retrospectively) the manner and processes through which the discourse will be conducted in the virtual “town hall”. In essence, this article focuses on one of the many questions occupying the Israeli legal system and that is whether website owners should be liable in defamation for speech published by third parties on the Internet (through blogs, tweets on Twitter, posts on Facebook,11As of the date of writing this paper, the Israeli courts have been presented with only a single incident in which the defendant's statement of claim included Facebook Corp. as a potential defendant. The plaintiff, a mayor one of the major municipalities in Israel, sued six citizens for defamation. The court held that users could institute legal proceedings for defamation against Facebook although ultimately the case against Facebook was dismissed due to lack of personal jurisdiction CC 24553-06-12 Oved v. Oved (July 16, 2012), LawData (by subscription) (Isr.). In a recent case heard by the High Court of Northern Ireland, plaintiffs were awarded £35,000 in damages after the defendant posted false and abusive messages and information relating to the plaintiffs on Facebook. The claim against Facebook was dismissed. See AB Ltd. v. Facebook Ireland Ltd. (Feb. 6, 2013) [2013] NIQB 14 http://www.bailii.org/nie/cases/NIHC/QB/2013/14.html (last visited Apr. 6, 2013). Although the defendant was anonymous, his identity was disclosed. See also News: Northern Ireland Judge Awards £35,000, Feb. 9, 2012, http://inforrm.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/news-northern-ireland-judge-awards-35000-damages-for-anonymous-facebook-libels/ (last visited Apr. 6, 2013). In a similar case, a Facebook user created a page entitled “keeping our kids safe from predators” which was designed to warn parents against convicted child sex offenders such as the plaintiff. The plaintiff applied for an order requiring Facebook to monitor the content of the page and immediately remove such publication from the Facebook website. The Court held that the content of the offending Facebook page constituted, unlawful harassment of the plaintiff and further held that the perpetuation of the website created a risk of infringing the plaintiff rights to freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment under Article 3 of the ECHR, together with plaintiff's right to preserve his privacy and family life under Article 8 of the ECHR. See X v. Facebook Ireland Ltd. [2012] NIQB 96 (Ir.). uploaded video clips on YouTube and the like) when no connection exists between the third party and the site owner apart from the fact that the third party has used the website as a platform to publish the offensive speech. The issue of the liability of the website owner has ramifications for the injured party's capacity to institute an action for defamation against the website owner, as often only the latter will be in a position to compensate the injured party (financially) for the offensive speech. The Israeli legal system, which in many ways furnishes a unique and interesting framework for examining the question posed above, as we explain in the body of the article, presents a fascinating example of how the Israeli legislature and the courts have dealt and continue to deal with claims filed against website owners for damage to reputation as a result of speech published by third parties. The article offers a comprehensive review of the status of the right to freedom of speech, anonymity and the right to reputation in Israel, the considerations for and against the imposition of liability on website owners and the latest case law on these questions.

Bre Pettis MakerBot's founder is on the edge of the 3-D printing revolution [Resources_Profile

In 2008, perennial tinkerer Bre Pettis was toiling away in a warehouse-turned-hacker-space in New York City when he ran into a wall. He and a few friends were participating in the RepRap project, which aims to build a self-replicating device capable of printing all the components needed to duplicate itself. But Pettis and his friends couldn't make it work with the tools they had on hand.

Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe by Elisheva Carlebach (review)

Reviewed by: Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe by Elisheva Carlebach Elisheva Baumgarten Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe Elisheva Carlebach. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 292 pp. Modern media and self-help books are filled with discussions of time—how to maximize time, how scarce time is, how important it is to modern man. Reading modern resources one could get the impression that time troubles were not part of the past. Yet, time has always been important for groups and individuals. Whether calculated by minutes, days, weeks, or years, different ways of understanding time have been the basis of alliances and divisions between individuals, religions, and even civilizations. Despite the importance of time and calendar, time has rarely been studied by Jewish historians, with one exception: the polemics around calendars in Jewish historiography have been symbolic of ways parting, whether as part of religious debates between Jews and others, during late antiquity when the rabbis sought to consolidate Jewish identity, or when the Karaites and Rabbinites argued over ritual and rites. Yet seemingly “uncontested” time within a unified community has hardly received attention, certainly not after antiquity. Elisheva Carlebach’s new book is both a broad and specific study of time and calendar. The book focuses on calendars and books of calendric computations—all written by Jews in early modern Europe, capturing a new perspective on early modern Jewish history, indeed a new prism through which to understand Jews and their Jewishness. In her beautiful and riveting book Carlebach outlines how the system behind the calendar and the ideology that accompanied their making changed over the course of two and a half centuries. Most importantly, she demonstrates how these changes reflected and produced a new way of understanding Jewish time that was in constant dialogue with the ways time was conceived outside the world of the Jewish community. [End Page 105] The eight chapters of the book can each be read on its own or as part of the whole. The first chapter is an introduction describing the methods of calculating the Jewish calendar and their conceptualization dependent on the sun and the moon. As Carlebach emphasizes in this chapter and then illustrates in different ways throughout the book, time and its reckoning were connected to God, creation, existence, and thus to religious doctrine and belief. Continuing this line, the calendar was also connected to mysticism and esotericism. The introduction leads the reader from antiquity to the early modern period in German-speaking Europe, which is the heart of the study. Briefly tracing the ideas of medieval intellectuals, Carlebach arrives at the cusp of the early modern period. Chapter 2 situates the reader in early modern controversies of time. The Gregorian reform of 1582 reflected and stimulated new European Christian thinking about science, religion and the political order, and all these left their mark on the Jews who lived among the Christians. This reform was part and parcel of the printing revolution which made calendars household items. By the sixteenth century they had become almanacs, accompanied by popular sayings. Carlebach demonstrates how the Jewish calendars reflected the concerns of their Christian neighbors. For example, the Gregorian reform was not greeted uniformly, and these debates were evident in contemporary Jewish calendars as well. If the first two chapters of the book set the stage, chapters 3 and 4 explore how Jewish calendars changed in the age of print and how calendars became books, bringing previously privileged knowledge into every home. These new calendars featured the names of Jewish months and notations relevant to the ritual cycle alongside the days of the week corresponding to the Hebrew dates and the Christian months, indicating Christian holidays and saints’ days as well as important markets and seasonal matters. Folk medicine and remedies were also noted, as were the stars and seasons. Much of this information was taken from non-Jewish calendars. Alongside the calendars used by laymen, the scholarly elite studied books in which the calculation of the seasons was explained, often referred to as secret. These were usually copied by hand and flourished in manuscript into the eighteenth century...

Everyday Reading: Print Culture and Collective Identity in the Río de la Plata, 1780–1910

This is a first book by a professor of Spanish who clearly has an interest in the cultural ramifications of the history of print and a love of archives. William Garrett Acree makes a convincing case for the importance of what he calls “everyday reading” in the Río de la Plata and suggests that it was not an accident that Argentina and Uru-guay have had the highest literacy rates in Latin America since the late nineteenth century. Acree defines everyday reading to include a wide variety of activities, from reading newspapers, being read to in pulperías, and seeing advertisements to using schoolbooks, stamps, and currency.According to the author, there were four principal moments when everyday reading led to systemic cultural shifts in the Río de la Plata. The first was the introduction of a printing press into the region in 1780, resulting in what the author considers to be “the first printing revolution” (p. 189). This supposed revolution produced the second key moment: independence and the creation of national symbols for the fledgling republics. The third phase of everyday reading went hand in hand with the emergence of cattle culture and local and national caudillos; it was marked by the creation of gauchesque literature, a literature that reflected and fed the political divide between Federales and Unitarios. The fourth phase saw the creation of late nineteenth- century literacy campaigns and of nationalism, both of which responded to the growing threat of European immigration. In this phase, the emergence of mass distribution media directly and indirectly led to access to a dramatically increased amount of printed material and a growing interest in media content. The wide audience that now experienced everyday reading became a hallmark of the region.Acree employs a wide range of sources to show how everyday reading became everyday literacy over time. Newspapers, national coats of arms, laws and decrees, printed verses, descriptions of patriotic celebrations, cattle brands, textbooks (including their illustrations and covers), popular magazines, paintings, advertisements, cigarette boxes and cigarette cards, photographs, postcards, stamps, and paper currency are only some of the sources that the author uses to make his case. Another strength of this work is the continual comparison between what was happening in Argentina with similar movements in Uruguay. This is particularly true in Acree’s chapter on mandatory primary education, where he shows the strong, ongoing intellectual ties between these two countries as well as a similar chronology in the development of everyday literacy.Unfortunately, in underlining the new “emphasis on the importance of the printed word” that accompanied the May Revolution (p. 17), Acree forgets that Spanish colonial culture was already one in which the written word was important. One need only forage through escribanía records or endless legal proceedings to appreciate the power of the written word throughout colonial Spanish America. Moreover, Acree tells us that everyday reading “brought people together more often than before and in greater numbers . . . . [that] people began associating with each other because of reading, and [that] reading became the centerpiece of sociability . . . . it solidified beliefs and forms of behavior” (p. 4). While an attractive idea, it is hard to prove that this was true. Lastly, the author sees everyday reading as an ever- changing phenomenon and the key to the creation of a “collective identity.” As with all hypotheses that link a historical outcome to one variable, the author’s insistence on seeing a strong link between print culture and collective identity is at times a bit forced. Identity is in itself a slippery category; it is even more difficult to ascertain, for example, the degree to which an illiterate ranch hand’s listening to someone reading a gauchesque poem or a newspaper molded his identity.Nonetheless, this is an interesting and important book on a little- studied aspect of the Río de la Plata. Acree’s writing is clear and relatively free of jargon (but a bit repetitive), although phrases such as “national poetic discourse and imaginary,” “symbolic repertoires,” “modes of seeing,” and “worlds of orality” appear from time to time. Most importantly, this work also suggests that the commonly held view of European immigration as creating highly literate societies in Argentina and Uruguay should be revised to take into account earlier examples of everyday literacy.

The 3‐D printing revolution: Dreams made real, one layer at a time

Science NewsVolume 183, Issue 5 p. 20-25 Feature The 3-D printing revolution: Dreams made real, one layer at a time Rachel Ehrenberg, Rachel EhrenbergSearch for more papers by this author Rachel Ehrenberg, Rachel EhrenbergSearch for more papers by this author First published: 25 February 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/scin.5591830516Citations: 4Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume183, Issue59 March 2013Pages 20-25 RelatedInformation

Cultural Memory and Gender in Iceland from Medieval to Early Modern Times

Cultural Memory and Gender in Iceland from Medieval to Early Modern Times Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir Thanks to the humanistic movement of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, many of the great Icelandic manuscripts from the Middle Ages were collected, transcribed, and preserved.1 Ever since Michael Clanchy’s From Memory to Written Record in the late 1970s, there has been a growing research interest in the field of medieval literacy and memorial culture in a European context (Clanchy 1979, 202). In the Icelandic case, much more can be done.2 Clanchy underscored that for a long time after the introduction of literacy, an oral culture continued to exist: written words were, for instance, communicated by being read aloud, and throughout the Middle Ages, memorial culture continued to be a mixture of the oral and the written. In this context it is important to remember what Elisabeth van Houts has convincingly argued, namely that writing was not only produced by an isolated group of men in monasteries, since women, as well as laymen, actively participated in textual production (van Houts 1999, 1–2, 2001, 1–16). This paper will first focus on the fact that the transmission of certain texts and stories became an important part of the cultural memory of [End Page 378] the Icelanders, while other texts were forgotten and lost. Second, we shall ask who the bearers of the textual transmission were, and why some stories became more popular than others. The third question to be treated is what role gender played in collective memory in Iceland during the time of transmission from the medieval to the early modern period. Throughout this paper I will focus on the transcription and preservation not only of literature, but also of legal documents as well as devotional literature and—to a certain degree—various artifacts. In his Varieties of Cultural History from 1997, Peter Burke underlined that the social history of remembrance is selective, adding that it is our task as historians to identify the principles of selection (Burke 1997, 45). To be able to study this problem historically, one needs to identify how memory in past times was made and produced. Normally in social and cultural studies, this memory is related to communication of a collective character through some sort of media. Here we shall focus on some of the medieval media used for transmitting memory in the Icelandic context (Hermann 2009). There was a selective remembrance of the past, and—following Peter Burke—our task is both to identify this selection and to determine the principle behind it. Not all historical sources are media for cultural memory, but the earliest textual production of the Icelanders was to a very high degree, in a way that gave storytelling an entirely new platform.3 Something similar can be said about the printing revolution of the early modern period. After the Reformation, printing technology was introduced in Iceland, and greater stress was laid on publishing religious texts, not least the Bible, in the vernacular. Thus, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a shift in media from handwritten manuscripts on parchment or paper to printed books occurred, which had profound consequences for the art of memory, sometimes even described as “the death of the medieval memory” (Le Goff 1992, 81–82). That point is open to debate, but it is certain that with the introduction, first of paper in the fifteenth century, then of printing in the sixteenth century, it became easier and cheaper to make all kinds of transcriptions. Just as important was that the new faith introduced with the Reformation had consequences with regard to the type of books being published. The Reformation was followed, as we have already noted, by a growing interest in new religious literature in the [End Page 379] vernacular, but it also made some of the Latin writings from the medieval period—for instance, collections of Canon Law and ecclesiastical statutes, or sermon collections—outdated.4 Canon Law and Latin Manuscripts With the Christian religion, the Latin language was introduced in Iceland. Icelandic history was written in the vernacular, but during the twelfth century, how to place the history of Iceland in the...

Xerox's High Temperature, Increased Fluid Latitude, High Performance Print Head

Inkjet printing is becoming widely used in areas beyond current document printing such as digital fabrication and industrial printing. Success in product development for different digital fabrication and industrial printing applications is greatly dependent on the fluids that are printed. Xerox has developed the M-series print head, which is an innovative stainless steel head capable of jetting a wide variety of fluids at both ambient and elevated temperatures. This head has been designed to have long life and high reliability. Also it has one of the highest fluidic outputs, per linear inch, of any print head in the market today. The goal of this paper is to give the reader some understanding of following for the M-series head. First it's mechanical and fluidic design, how the print head is constructed, its high performance operation, and its ability to jet fluids at a variety of temperatures. Second the paper discusses the heads unique ability for jet to jet calibration, key implementation guidelines, and its great reliability and robustness. Third the paper talks about current uses of the head and future variations that can enable more digital fabrication and industrial printing applications. This paper describes the value of the M-series print head and its usefulness in expanding the digital fabrication and industrial printing revolution.

Jezik znanstvene komunikacije

Cilj je rada istražiti i predstaviti najčešće konceptualizacijske mehanizme u opažanju i opisivanju znanstvenih fenomena koji omogućuju uspješnu i učinkovitu razmjenu informacija na razini komunikacije između znanstvene zajednice i 'publike', ali i na razini komunikacije unutar same znanstvene zajednice u području informacijskih znanosti. Primjena konceptualizacijskih mehanizama u jeziku informacijskih znanosti predstavljena je na čestim, gotovo svakodnevno korištenim pojmovima, kao što su baza podataka, gadget-utrka, informacijska arhitektura, intelektualno vlasništvo, revolucija tiska, računalni virus, umjetni život i sl. Praćeno je opažanje i opisivanje takvih pojmova kako u popularnom diskursu (primjerice na različitim mrežnim stranicama) tako i u dostupnoj znanstvenoj i stručnoj literaturi. Rad se sastoji od četiri dijela. Nakon općenitog uvodnog dijela o jeziku znanstvene komunikacije, redom se predstavljaju teorija konceptualne metafore, teorija konceptualne integracije i znanstveni model. Svaki je konceptualizacijski mehanizam popraćen analizom konkretnih primjera iz jezika informacijskih znanosti. Budući da je područje informacijskih znanosti pod stalnim utjecajem tehnoloških promjena i razvoja suvremene informacijsko-komunikacijske tehnologije, često se uočavaju novi i različiti fenomeni koji traže novi misaoni okvir u procesu opažanja te nove načine jezične artikulacije u procesu njihova opisivanja i komuniciranja znanstvenoj i neznanstvenoj publici. Temeljni je doprinos rada upravo prikaz i analiza nekolicine primjera uočenih novih misaonih okvira i novih načina jezične artikulacije u popularnom i znanstvenom diskursu jezika informacijske znanosti.

Science in three dimensions: The print revolution

Science in three dimensions: The print revolution

A Queda das Nações: O Destino dos Sistemas Sociais no Novo Ambiente Midiático

Marshall McLuhan propôs uma visão midiacêntrica
 do mundo, expressa em seu famoso aforismo “o
 meio é a mensagem”. Este ponto de vista, e também
 o trabalho de McLuhan como acadêmico, foram deliberadamente sufocados por muitos anos, até a internet tornar-se um fenômeno popular na década de 1990. As observações de McLuhan a respeito de eletricidade, tecnologia elétrica e mídia eletrônica, que resultaram na mudança no ambiente mediático da galáxia de Gutenberg para a Via Láctea de Marconi, são essenciais para entender
 as novas mídias que apareceram nas duas últimas décadas. Ao examinar especificamente a relação entre mídias e organização social, a ascensão do nacionalismo e do Estado-nação é rastreada até a revolução da imprensa no início da Europa moderna, ao passo que, por um lado, as tendências contemporâneas ao globalismo e, por outro lado, a novas formas de localismo e tribalismo, estão
 associadas com as comunicações eletrônicas e com
 as novas mídias.
 Palavras-chave
 McLuhan, mídia, ecologia midiática, ambiente midiático, mídia impressa, mídias eletrônicas, novas mídias, nacionalismo, globalismo

Requiem for monastery library … or Halleluyah?

ABSTRACTPurpose: The contribution briefly summarizes the importance of books for monasticism, especially the sacred books, which monks learned very often almost entirely by heart. Books had an important role for the support of individual spiritual growth and as such were often also a part of the orders’ Rules. In monasteries books enabled work to monks (labora); they were intended for the church and worship (ora); but most of all they were intended for study in the solitude of the cell or in the library. And the monasteries of medieval and early modern Europe could not miss the richly stocked libraries. In the Franciscan friary in Ljubljana books were also used for studies. Their library was one of the largest at the time of Sigismund Škerpin (18th century) in Ljubljana.Methodology/approach: The contribution summarizes particular theoretical frameworks, linking them to practical knowledge and experience. The monastic Rules are also included.Results: Today the stock of the Ljubljana Franciscan monastery library is still rising, but the question of its future remains open as the number of its readers and visitors declines. Of course, as manuscript heritage was not destroyed by the print revolution, so the digitization will not end the traditional forms of books and libraries, but in the future it will be necessary to change the overall perspective if we want to keep the library alive. There are some possibilities transforming the nowadays monastic libraries into new forms with the change of the purpose of the libraries into museums or research laboratories.Research limitations: Since this is only a short outline of the issues monastic libraries have, the present contribution can be seen as an introduction to a possible more indepth study, which would enlighten their current state. Synchronic and diachronic studies of individual libraries of various orders in Slovenia are required with analytical comparison of obtained results in order to get reliable conclusions.Originality/practical implications: The author draws attention to an important cultural issue, which is partly ignored by librarians and other scientific communities.

BRIAN RICHARDSON, Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy.

AS early as 1977, in his introduction to the Italian translation of Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin’s L’apparition du livre,1 Armando Petrucci underlined how, contrary to accepted opinion, the arrival of printing did not by any means spell an end to manuscript production. On the contrary, ‘up to the beginning of the sixteenth century, manuscripts and printed books should not be seen as two distinct phenomena but rather as two aspects of the same process of cultural production and distribution, to be differentiated not so much by their technical means of manufacture as by the type of text they reproduced and therefore by the type of readership they wanted their products to reach’. In recent decades this subject has been tackled on several occasions: new and more wide-ranging research has shown that the transition between the two systems of production was a slow process, undermining the simplistic view that the printing revolution managed over the course of a few years to sweep away centuries of a consolidated tradition of manuscript transmission. Working also from the point of view of the new material object itself, the printed book, it has been shown how much this owed to manuscript antecedents and how slowly and hesitantly its own formal autonomy as a product developed.2

Beyond the Book: François Bon and the Digital Transition

In numerous entries on his website Tiers livre (tierslivre.net), the French writer Francois Bon insists on the momentous nature of the transformations taking place in the contemporary literary world (Si la litterature; Ceci n'est pas; Qu'est-ce qu'un livre numerique). Bon argues that the advent of the is equal in significance to the print revolution brought by Gutenberg. According to this view, the Web is not just one more medium among others, but in fact operates a number of crucial displacements in our modes of writing and reading and ultimately alters literary and social practices: Internet est 'transparent', il traverse la totalite des pratiques mais en tant que lie a cette pratique elle-meme, et non pas sa mediatisation (Vers un Internet). It would be a mistake to see these claims as an expression of faith in progress, on the part of an author whose works (from Sortie d'usine in 1982 to Daewoo in 2004) have documented the damage to human com- munities wrought by technological and economic change. In texts posted on Tiers livre between 2005 and 2011, Bon acknowledges that we are currently on unstable ground; we do not yet know precisely what new configurations of the literary object will emerge, which developments will shape the material and social field of writing and reading (electronic paper is still unconvincing, new devices and interfaces for reading can- not yet compete with the book format). Nevertheless, in accepting the inevitability of change, Bon expresses a guarded optimism regarding not only the survival of literature, but also the possibility of its renewal: Le paradoxe d'Internet, c'est d'accepter que le livre ne soit pas le seul destin de l'ecrit, mais, nous conferant effectivite du langage sur le monde, parce qu'on va faire circuler des phrases sur un ecran, renouvelle que la langue soit encore corrosive sur le monde (Si la litterature). The following pages will relate Bon's wide-reaching claims about the new digital landscape to his recent literary work, with a particular focus on the curious Web-project and novel Tumulte (2006). Bon has increas- ingly placed the at the center of his literary activity. His Web- based projects, which date from 1997, span various forms and functions.

A history of reading and writing: in the Western world

What is the History of Reading and Writing? Reading and Writing in the Ancient and Medieval world Was There a Printing Revolution? Print and the Protestant Reformation Renaissance Books and Humanist Readers Print and Popular Culture The Rise of Literacy in the Early Modern West, c.1600-1800 Censorship and the Reading Public in Pre-revolutionary France The Reading Fever, 1750-1830 The Age of the Mass Reading Public New Readers and Reading Cultures The Democratisation of Writing, 1800 to the Present Readers and Writers in the Digital Age Further Reading

新しいダイレクト製版・印刷システム"グラビアン"

新しいダイレクト製版・印刷システム"グラビアン"

Introduction: The European Fairy-Tale Tradition between Orality and Literacy

Introduction: The European Fairy-Tale Tradition between Orality and Literacy Dan Ben-Amos (bio) In fairy godfather: straparola, venice, and the fairy tale tradition, Ruth Bottigheimer proposes to correct the historical narrative of the emergence of the fairy tale in Europe and to recognize “Straparola’s role as an originator in the history of modern fairy tale” (Bottigheimer 2002:3). Giovanni Francesco Straparola (c. 1480–c. 1557) is not exactly an unknown figure in folktale history.1 His book, Le piacevoli notti (Pleasant nights), which appeared in English as The Nights of Straparola (Straparola [1551–1553] 1894), was long recognized as a predecessor of Giambattista Basile’s Lo cunto de li cunti (The tale of tales; published 1634–1636; also known in its 1674 edition as Il Pentamerone) and Charles Perrault’s Contes de ma mere l’Oye (Tales of Mother Goose; Perrault [1695–1697] 1956). As Bottigheimer (2002:2) points out, the Grimm brothers considered Straparola as their precursor, admiring him as an author who conscientiously drew upon oral tradition. Selections from Straparola’s tales appeared in volumes published in Vienna in 1791, which included twenty-four tales, and in Berlin in 1817, which included eighteen tales and was accompanied by the copious notes of the editor and translator Friedrich Wilhelm Valentine Schmidt. In the mid-nineteenth century, Theodor Benfey found in the case of Straparola implicit support for his theory of the Indian origin of folktales. For him, the availability of Straparola’s tales was felicitous evidence for the possible historical interdependence of oral and literate tales. Since the idea that oral tradition alone could sustain a global diffusion of tales was unfathomable in his days, he relied on the migration and translation of the Panchatantra, a classic Indian tale collection, as a support for his Indian origin hypothesis (Benfey 1859). The availability of a European tale collection that demonstrated the possibility of such historical interdependence provided him with further support for his theory. In her book, Bottigheimer rekindles Benfey’s conception of literature as inspiration for oral storytelling, and she proceeds to attribute to Straparola a far greater role in the history of the folktale. She argues that he was not merely a link in the back-andforth transitions between oral storytelling and literature but was an original literary innovator who created a new, previously unknown folktale form—the “rise tale.” Associated with this form, and thematically central to it, is the narrative role of a magical benefactor in human or animal guise; Bottigheimer considers this narrative figure to be Straparola’s literary invention as well. In her view, Straparola acted as an [End Page 373] agent of a newly rising urban middle class and expressed in his “rise tales” its socioeconomic aspirations. While the consideration of folktales as a reflection of social and cultural values has been a staple of folklore research, the proposition that a literary writer originated a folklore form, and created a new narrative role to go along with this form, is revolutionary for the field. Such a clear, precise, and well-defined proposition, which is limited to a specific literary-historical case, could be tested like a scientific hypothesis. Karl Popper proposed that a scientific system “require[s] that its logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience” (1959:41). Although Bottigheimer formulates her hypothesis in descriptive rather than logical terms, in her challenging study she offers a rare opportunity for testing a proposition that concerns a critical period in the history of the folktale: the era of the print revolution (see Baron, Lindquist, and Shevlin 2007; Eisenstein 1979, 1983). This was a period in which chapbooks, pamphlets, broadsides, and other forms of popular printing entered the domains of the marketplace, the family room, and the coffeehouse, as well as the community hall and bar, where oral entertainment previously ruled. Regarding the European folktale tradition, print also changed the rules of historical evidence and entrapped folktales in a historical paradox. Chronologically, many literary tales pre-date the recordings of their oral counterparts. In fact, it is...

Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine (review)

Reviewed by: Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine Andrew Fleck Jonathan Sawday, Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine. London: Routledge, 2007. xxii + 402 pp. index. 30 b/w illus. Optimism about the power of ingenuity to allow human beings eventually to overcome many limitations of the material world might seem to be a modern phenomenon. Renaissance humanists' hopes about human perfectibility, however, gave impetus to many European technological advances of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, important predecessors for European industrialization typically dated to a later period. In his provocative Engines of the Imagination, Jonathan Sawday offers brilliant insights into early modern attitudes toward technology. He uncovers and explores a paradox at the center of European understandings of the purpose of machines: human beings may develop technology to supplement their imperfect condition in an approximation of their Edenic perfection, but in doing so they may run the risk of sinfully transgressing the limitations imposed upon them as a consequence of original sin. The period thus encodes machines doubly, as signs of fallen humanity's weakness and as divinely merciful means of repairing the deficit. The book includes fascinating readings of Leonardo da Vinci, Agricola, Montaigne, and Francis Bacon, among a vast array of others, contributing an important intervention in the history of science. Unfortunately for the readers of this journal, only a small portion of the book treats matters of the Restoration, and these chapters are slightly less compelling than the rest of the study. But Sawday's bold approach to the questions he raises about European attitudes to the natural and the constructed environments and the technology that fuses the two offers an important foundation and fascinating background for thinking about engines of the Restoration imagination. In five chapters on pre-Restoration topics, Sawday isolates key facets of Renaissance Europeans' fascination with machines, offering dazzling readings that focus on Montaigne's Essais, a painting of a woman at a spinning wheel (Las Hilanderas) by Velasquez, portions of Edmund Spenser, and scenes from William Shakespeare. Beginning with primarily Continental texts, Sawday explores da Vinci's, Montaigne's, [End Page 57] and the Italian architect Domenico Fontana's fascination with machinery's ability to magnify power. He mentions in passing a theme that will recur at various points in his study: that for these men such engines acquire symbolic significance for the Renaissance state. He turns next to the importance of the print revolution for Renaissance mechanical thinking, focusing in particular on "machine books"—texts devoted to complex and typically unique engines such as those found in Agricola's illustrated De Re Metallica, one of scores of such tomes—arguing that such books contributed to the process by which "labor or work was itself being redefined by machinery" (88). In a chapter devoted to the gendered component of Renaissance technology, Sawday explores the imaginative connection of women and wheels, focusing particularly on the spinning wheel, but looking as well at Fortuna and her wheel. He then proceeds to a lively reading of Renaissance texts concerned with the oxymoronic possibility of mechanical life. He considers the many idiosyncratic Renaissance automata as part of the period's poetic investigations into the boundaries of art and nature. As mechanistic thinking took deeper root in the Renaissance imagination, he argues in his next chapter, Francis Bacon and others reoriented attitudes toward technology, moving from the enhancement of human perception to the treatment of bodies (and the universe) as merely complex machines whose operations—even the act of intercourse—submit to a dull regularity of process. In the final pages of his chapter on "Reasoning Engines," Sawday explores a distrust of mechanistic thinking in John Wilmot's (Rochester's) verse. This final fifth of his study may be most pertinent to scholars of the Restoration. The final two chapters of Engines of the Imagination treat John Milton and Andrew Marvell and the place of machinery in their poetry. Contrasting Milton's Paradise Lost to the idealism of the Royal Society, Sawday argues that the poet reveals a skepticism about ingenuity, aligning invention and industry with the sinister figures of the epic and the consequences...