The Gutenberg Parenthesis traces the epoch of print from its fateful beginnings to our digital present - and draws out lessons for the age to come.The age of print is a grand exception in history. For five centuries it fostered what some call print culture - a worldview shaped by the completeness, permanence, and authority of the printed word. As a technology, print at its birth was as disruptive as the digital migration of today. Now, as the internet ushers us past print culture, journalist Jeff Jarvis offers important lessons from the era we leave behind.To understand our transition out of the Gutenberg Age, Jarvis first examines the transition into it. Tracking Western industrialized print to its origins, he explores its invention, spread, and evolution, as well as the bureaucracy and censorship that followed. He also reveals how print gave rise to the idea of the mass - mass media, mass market, mass culture, mass politics, and so on - that came to dominate the public sphere.What can we glean from the captivating, profound, and challenging history of our devotion to print? Could it be that we are returning to a time before mass media, to a society built on conversation, and that we are relearning how to hold that conversation with ourselves? Brimming with broader implications for today's debates over communication, authorship, and ownership, Jarvis' exploration of print on a grand scale is also a complex, compelling history of technology and power.

Written by a leading scholar who has also had a long career in journalism, during which time he has been a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, media consultant, blogger, and author, and has experienced first-hand the transition from print to digital across a variety of media and industries

Part I. THE GUTENBERG PARENTHESIS1. The Parenthesis2. Print's Presumptions3. TrepidationPart II. INSIDE THE PARENTHESIS4. What Came Before5. How to Print6. Gutenberg7. After the Bible8. Print Spreads9. The Troubles10. Creation with Print11. The Birth of the Newspaper12. Print Evolves: Until 180013. Aesthetics of Print14. Steam and the Mechanization of Print15. Electricity and the Industrialization of Media16. The Meaning of It AllPart III. LEAVING THE PARENTHESIS17. Conversation vs. Content18. Death to the Mass19. Creativity and Control20. Institutional RevolutionsAfterword: And What of the Book?AcknowledgementsNotesBibliographyIndexColophon