Just like today, over 500 years ago, an ageing clergyman gets up from his table that is covered in rags, pieces of paper, pens, ink, little flakes of gold leaf and pots of glue. He looks down at the work he has just completed: a massive book of over 350 pages lies on the rough workbench. Heinrich Cremer does not hear the barking dog in his yard. He does not hear his wife calling him to lunch. His eyes are fixed on the smooth brown leather of Gutenberg’s book, lying in a pool of golden sunlight. It’s finished. It’s done. The first printed book in history is finally ready. It is the 24th of August, 1456. A moment later the bells of St. Stephen’s will toll as they do every hour, of every day, of every year. But things will never be the same again.

We are fond of thinking that our age is special. We say things like: “The Internet is the biggest change that has happened in the history of mankind.” Or: “The computer has changed the world like no invention before it.” But is it true?

Before Gutenberg invented printing with moveable type, each single book had to be copied by hand. Monasteries had writing rooms full of monks who all day were busy copying books. Even so, books were extremely rare. Only the richest people had ever held one in their hands.

Teachers and scientists memorised what they needed to know. Plato had written his philosophy in dialogue form, partly to make it easier to memorise the texts. When you learned a text, you owned it: it was, literally, contained inside your body. This kept sources fluid: people changed things, misremembered them, or intentionally altered them to fit their own understanding and opinions. Knowledge was alive and personal.

Plato himself didn’t have a high opinion of the invention of the written word:

All this changed on …

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