Patchen Barss’ book The Erotic Engine has the subtitle “How Pornography Has Powered Mass Communication from Gutenberg to Google”. An article on it highlights ten technologies that “secretly owe debts to the pornography business” Among them, E-commerce, Streaming video, Webcams and Bandwidth; you can read the fascinating post here. But if the Pornography industry drove forward electronic communication, it was an entirely different arena that drove the print world it is replacing.
What was it? Religion.
Yes, at one time religion was the realm of innovation and exploration. And by innovation I don’t just mean innovation of thought. The Bible, for example, was the first book to be printed using the printing press. The genius behind it was a man named Johannes Gutenberg. As a Wired.com post notes
Gutenberg made one contribution to technology in particular and to civilization in general, but it was a doozy. The printing press made the mass production of printed material possible and revolutionized human communication.
Gutenberg was born in Mainz sometime between 1394 and 1400 — his actual birth date is uncertain. A goldsmith by trade, he borrowed money from local businessmen to develop a printing press that used movable, replaceable letters made from cast metal.
Although movable type existed in China as early as the 11th century, Gutenberg’s printing press began a chain of events that altered the social and scientific history of Europe.
He first used the printing press in the 1450s to produce a two-volume folio of what is now known as the “Gutenberg Bible”. What would have taken months or years to complete by hand was now done in a fraction of the time, thanks to this new invention. In all, 180 copies of the Gutenberg Bible were produced, of which an astounding 48 still exist.
Gutenberg died on this day in 1468, but his technological impact — not only religion, but on all of life — continues.
Therefore it is particularly striking to see religion increasingly becoming the bastion of anti-intellectualism and scientific rejectionism. As I heard first-hand in the NJ State House yesterday, the unwavering commitment to let ancient text trump current knowledge is a dangerous trend in an aspect of life that once led innovation.
It is a funny, but sad, reversal.