The Origin of Print Culture

The shift to alphabetic writing made widespread literacy more attainable. It became easier to learn how to write and, perhaps more important, easier to learn how to read. With a writing system that could easily represent spoken language, it became possible to conceive of recording a lecture, a political speech, or a plan of action. Those permanent records led to many changes in society. It overstates the case to mark the beginning of history by the beginning of an alphabet. Nevertheless, the movement from
the oral narratives of Homer's day to the formal historical analysis of Herodotus and Thucydides depended on having the efficient, widely used writing system that the Greek alphabet provided. It is a similar overstatement to link the beginning of formal education, as in Plato's Academy, to the creation of an alphabet. Yet it is no accident that people speak of learning the ABCs; the modern educational system depends on alphabetic writing. Others have traced the origins of literature, philosophy, government,and science to the creation of alphabetic writing systems.

In the fifteenth century, the printing press was invented in Europe. Although a printing press had been developed in China, Johannes Gutenberg's innovation was to combine the press with typography, a technology that itself depended on an alphabetic system of writing. The possibility of wide dissemination of texts reshaped the church
and the academy, extending a process of alphabetization that had begun more than twenty-five hundred years earlier. 

A key aspect throughout this process of developing alphabets was the ability to represent knowledge in both permanent and mobile forms. As Bruno Latour (1988) argues, this made possible the development of both modern science and the Western European imperialist movement. The alphabet was a key element, facilitating
typographic printing, which in turn allowed the easy reproduction of texts.

The great flowering of Greek culture appeared shortly after the adoption of alphabetic writing. Later, the Roman culture blossomed following its adoption of the alphabet from the Etruscans. Then, the full realization of the alphabet is observed through the printing press, which predates the Renaissance of these classic cultures. It is thus easy to adopt the innovation-driven view that the alphabet was necessary for, or even caused, these great changes in history. In The Literate Mind (1998), Jens Brockmeier cautions people about this kind of reasoning. He argues that before an alphabet can have the powerful effects attributed to it, there must be a literate mind ready to accept it and make use of it. More generally, that caution should lead people to be skeptical about any simple, one-step model of social change. Alphabets have certainly made a difference in the development of print culture, but it is necessary to look carefully at the processes of change to see the relations among literacy tools (such as alphabets), literacy practices, social organization, and literate modes of thought.