0:00 By the year 1500, just fifty years after Gutenberg's first Bible, printing presses across Europe had already produced more than twenty million books.0:09 An absolutely staggering number.0:11 Right?0:12 Last week we were arguing over the fall of Constantinople as history's great flashpoint, but for my money, this—the explosion of the printed word—is what TRULY remade civilization.0:23 It's the engine of the Enlightenment, the Reformation, scientific discovery...0:28 it's everything.0:29 Oh, I see we're starting with the fairy tale version today.0:33 Look, twenty million copies of...0:35 what, exactly?0:36 Because for every rediscovered piece of Greek philosophy, there were a hundred vitriolic, hate-filled pamphlets calling for your neighbor to be burned as a heretic.0:47 That's incredibly cynical.0:49 You can't just ignore Martin Luther.0:51 The Ninety-five Theses went viral, for lack of a better term, entirely because of the press.0:57 A single monk in Wittenberg could challenge the single most powerful institution on Earth.1:03 That is the definition of empowerment.1:05 Was it empowerment, or was it just a new form of chaos?1:09 You say empowerment, I say it directly led to the Thirty Years' War, a conflict that killed up to a third of the population in some German states.1:18 The press didn't create a thoughtful debate society; it gave every faction a megaphone to scream "heretic" and it handed rulers the perfect excuse—a printed justification—to go to war.1:30 Okay, but that's focusing only on the destructive side.1:34 What about the constructive side?1:36 What about the scientific revolution?1:38 Ideas from Copernicus, from Vesalius on human anatomy—they could suddenly be replicated perfectly and distributed widely.1:46 Knowledge stopped being this fragile thing that could die with one person or in one library fire.1:52 It became permanent, shared, and cumulative.1:55 A permanent record for WHOM, though?1:58 This is the part everyone misses.2:00 Who owned the first presses?2:02 Rich merchants, the Church itself, and princes.2:05 It wasn't a public library.2:06 It was a tool.2:07 And for the powerful, it was the greatest tool for social control ever invented.2:12 Control?2:13 It's the dissemination of knowledge!2:15 It’s the opposite of control.2:17 No, it’s not!2:18 Think about it.2:19 Before the press, a king issues a decree.2:22 It's read aloud in a town square.2:24 It can be misremembered, argued with.2:26 But after the press?2:27 That decree is printed, by the thousands.2:30 It's nailed to every church door.2:32 It looks official, immutable, absolute.2:35 It's a technology that scales up authority.2:38 I hear you, but the authority it scaled most was the authority of a good IDEA.2:43 You're acting like people are just passive recipients.2:46 The press gave them texts, yes, but it also promoted literacy.2:50 It created a public sphere where one didn't exist.2:53 People could, for the first time, read the same thing at the same time and form an opinion outside of what the local priest told them.3:02 In theory.3:03 In practice, what they read was overwhelmingly propaganda meant to reinforce their existing beliefs.3:09 It didn't break down filter bubbles; it built them.3:12 A Protestant in Geneva wasn't reading Catholic arguments; they were reading anti-Catholic propaganda, which confirmed their biases.3:21 The press mostly just got better at telling people what they already wanted to hear.3:26 So what?3:27 That's still a choice.3:28 The fact that a farmer's son could even have the option to learn to read and encounter an idea that could change his life—that's the revolution.3:38 The door was unlocked, even if not everyone ran through it at once.3:42 But was it unlocked, or did they just swap out the gatekeeper?3:46 Before, power was held by the man with the sword.3:49 After, it was held by the man who owned the press.3:52 You say it created a public sphere; I say it created the marketplace for propaganda.3:58 It weaponized information on a mass scale.4:01 Okay, but that weapon is double-edged.4:03 It can be used for propaganda, yes, but it can also be used to expose that propaganda.4:09 You can't have one without the other.4:11 You can't have the Enlightenment without the risk of conflict.4:15 I'm just not sure the trade was worth it, certainly not for the people living through the bloodshed of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.4:24 They didn't get enlightenment.4:26 They got their villages burned down over theological disputes amplified by printing presses.4:32 So the free exchange of ideas is...4:35 bad?4:35 Because it can be messy?4:36 I think the "free exchange" is a myth.4:39 It was, and is, an exchange heavily weighted toward those with the money and power to control the means of production.4:46 The press didn't create truth.4:48 It just scaled up the battle over what "truth" means.4:52 And we're still living in the fallout of that explosion.
