How Google Books Nearly Saved my Life

Finding this week's book was slightly difficult for me. I made the mistake of not immediately going to the bookstore or Amazon to get my books at the beginning of the semester, so now I have the challenge of finding them the week they are due. This week was particularly challenging since the only copy at the UT Dallas Library was checked out, the local book stores were also sold out. I eventually found it at the Downtown Dallas Library (yes, I did grace the halls of a library after all) but not before, I found it on line! Almost the whole text of Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe can be found on Google Books! Since I did in fact need at least the whole text of the first half, I did continue looking until I found a hard copy. But the point is, I found it and thousands of other books online, free to anyone who has access to the Internet. In fact, Google now lets you custom print millions of books at home for free, or for a small sum, you can have your very own copy of an out of print book printed and bound for you.

The magnitude of printing press's impact on dissemination of information, allowing many more people access to books and information than ever before, is only approached by the Internet. Before the invention of the printing press, books were written and copied, but just one book took lots of time and money to create. If someone wanted more than one copy, they either had to hire several scribes, or wait for the same scribe to copy the original (or the copy) again AND it was pretty much guaranteed that the two copies would not be identical. For example:

In 1483, the Ripoli Press charged three florins for quinterno for setting up and printing Ficino's translation of Plato's Dialogues. A script might have charged one florin per quinterno for duplicating the same work. The Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies; the scribe would have turned out one (16).

Each of those 1,025 copies were identical and could be sold for less, while still making a profit. This meant that more, many more people had access to books. This not only changed the possibilities of learning, learning by reading instead of only by a live instructor, but also the possibilities of writing, mass communication, organization, and record keeping. The Internet has taken these possibilities even further. Not only can people access and read books and other information on the web, but also take classes remotely, publish their own works on blogs and other websites, as well as organize and disseminate endless amount of information.

Books were not the only media that were revolutionized by the printing press. Although movable type and block letters had been around for centuries, the printing press made maps, icons, and charts easier to replicate and mass produce. The result being that more people had access, recognized inaccuracies and created new, better maps and charts. Although easily reusable wood blocks meant that the same picture could be used on one page to illustrate Verona and in another Mantua (59), they could also be used to recreate accurate, recognizable pictures of the kings. In the same way, the Internet has made it far easier to look up pictures of celebrities and get instant updates on statistics and information. The consequence being that with the Internet, as well as the early printing press, not everything is looked over and fact checked right away. However, also like the Internet, the freely offered collective knowledge of readers often led to quickly reprinted new "more accurate" editions of books.

Then, like now the question of intellectual property began to arise. Before the invention of the printing press, there were no authors or copyrights. Stories were written in books and then copied by a scribe then memorized by a wandering scholar or minstrel and credited to anonymous if credited at all.

The terms plagiarism and copyright did not exist for the minstrel. It was only after printing that they began to hold significance for the author (84).

Now, with the easy access to copying and publishing that the Internet provides, the issues of creative property have returned once again. The free books that can be accessed on Google Books are supposed to be out from under copyright rules and considered Public Domain, however, not all of the books that they have offered up that way have been so. Fan Fiction sites have also brought up the question of who owns the rights to made up worlds and characters. Or even, the simple act of reposting a story form a news site can be considered piracy if the original story is not properly credited or liked back to.

Comparing the printing press revolution and the Internet revolution could be a book (or website) of its own. The question is, is the Internet really as big, as life changing, no, world changing as the invention of the printing press? I'm sure we'll be able to print a copy of that book soon.