The Advent Of Ebooks May Be A Sign Of Hope For Humanity
The printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg, five centuries before eBooks came onto the scene. In the field of human endeavor the printing press had beneficial implications for science and technology but seem to have left the human soul strangely untouched. Weapons of war, slavery and abuse of war thrive still though theoretically reviled by most social and moral viewpoints. There seems to be room for the human spirit to grow and catch up with technology.
The many benefits of the printing press are difficult to summarize but are probably the same as the benefits of literacy. Reading and writing skills enable societies to store and share information, knowledge, ideas and experiences. This sharing process enables people to bound over the achievements of predecessors into new ground. The wheel does not have to be re-invented endlessly. Humanity can advance towards flight, and from flight to space travel.
The invention of computers and hence the development the World Wide Web is another outcome of literacy. Some people argue that the first computer was the abacus used by ancient shepherds. Others begin the history half way through the twentieth century.
However, just as a fool may control a piece of brilliant engineering, so too the people behind computers may be sadly inadequate when compared with the tools that they use. It may be suggested by some that technology has evolved faster than the people who use it.
If the public gets the media that it deserves, as some people suggest, then the quality of the public mind is painfully embarrassing. Popular culture seems to have a propensity for following the banal, the lurid and the vulgar with intense fascination.
This sort of instinctual behavior might never be erased from the human psyche. However, the thought behind e-books was that the collective, intellectual behavior of human beings might be moved up the evolutionary scale several notches by the application of technology, to feed back into literacy what literacy has given to technology.
The aptly named Project Gutenberg began in 1971 with the idea that the literature of the world would be made available online to everyone easily and cheaply. Since then the eBooks industry has expanded exponentially. Many online sites sell and legally resell digital products at affordable prices. The ease with which a diversity of texts can now be accessed seems to set the stage for a new surge in literacy and its attendant benefits for humanity.
www.pireladigitalproducts.com and technology in general is definitely a sign of hope for humanity! Do you realize how much the world has improved? http://www.pireladigitalproducts.com