Evaluate the impact of technology and economics on those relationships.

3. Evaluate the impact of technology and economics on those relationships.

Speaking of thetechnological impact we should mention which part played the Guttenberg printing press. It was the key to the education and literacy for the whole nations. Gutenberg’s invention was world-changing because it opened literacy to all, that is, it allowed mass communication.

Handwritten or hand-copied materials were expensive to produce, and the cost of an education, in time and money, had made reading an expensive luxury. However, with the spread of printing, written communication was available to a much larger portion of the population, and the need for literacy among the lower and middle classes grew. The ability to read became less of a luxury and more of a necessity; eventually literacy spread, as did education. Soldiers at the front needed to be able to read the emperor’s orders. Butchers needed to understand the king’s shopping list. So the demand for literacy expanded, and more (and more types of) people learned to read. Tradespeople, soldiers, clergy, bakers, and musicians all now had business at the printer’s shop. They talked. They learned of things, both in conversation and by reading printed material. As more people learned to read, new ideas germinated and spread and cross-pollination of ideas occurred.

By the mid-18th century, printing and its libraries of science and mathematics had become one of the engines driving the Industrial Revolution. Print was responsible for building and disseminating bodies of knowledge, leading to scientific and technological developments and the refinement of new machines. In addition, industrialization reduced the time necessary to complete work, and this created something heretofore unknown to most working people—leisure time. Industrialization had another effect as well. As workers left their sunrise-to-sunset jobs in agriculture, the crafts, and trades to work in the newly industrialized factories, not only did they have more leisure time but they had more money to spend on their leisure. Farmers, fishermen, and tile makers had to put their profits back into their jobs. But factory workers took their money home; it was spendable. Combine leisure time and expendable cash with the spread of literacy and the result is a large and growing audience for printed information and entertainment.

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