EOTO Presentations

 The EOTO presentations from each person were fantastic overall. A lot of them were incredibly descriptive, and some were very fun to learn about! However, my personal favorite was the presentation on the printing press. I did not really know a lot about the printing press outside of, oddly enough, a music history class I took in high school. Learning about the history and significance of the printing press really opened my eyes about how a piece of technology can revolutionize the entire planet, despite not everyone feeling that it will.

Some of the most interesting points really shocked me, not only because the history of the printing press was not as I knew it (for the most part) but also learning about how revolutionary it actually was to society as a whole. One of my favorite pieces of information from the presentation was the fact that Gutenberg's printing press was not the first ever printing press, and the original inventor is unknown. As a result of this, combined with how revolutionary Gutenberg's press was to all of society, he is credited with the invention of it. I knew it was revolutionary for a number of reasons, but the thing that shocked me the most was the fact that it basically universalized literacy. With so many books being mass produced (The Bible in particular) written works became far more accessible to everyone as they were being mass produced so easily. The printing press revolutionized books and killed word of mouth and slowly mitigated handwritten methods of history-keeping.

Learning about the printing press really put a lot of my life into perspective. I ended up comparing its impact to that of the World Wide Web. We would have gotten by without either, but the printing press feels far more revolutionary when thinking about the timeline of history is far more impactful than that of the World Wide Web. Also, WWW did not benefit everyone for a few years, whereas the printing press was immediately impactful and was made for everyone. It was nice to help give me a lot of perspective and help me be grateful for the technology we have today, even if a lot of the biggest companies are not exactly trustworthy.