I was skipping through the more obscure regions of Sky TV last night when I happened to come across ‘Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press’. 

Part of BBC4’s medieval season, this documentary featured the ubiquitous Stephen Fry as he examined the history behind the ‘first media entrepreneur’ Johann Gutenberg, inventer of the printing press.

As the story unravelled, I was struck with the huge parallels between the impact of this invention and what is happening now with the online social media explosion.

In the early 15^th century books had to be hand-written and were therefore rare and incredibly expensive.  Only the wealthiest institutions such as the church and the universities could afford them.  For example in 1424, Cambridge University library owned just 122 books – each of which had a value equal to a farm or vineyard.  These organisations had a virtual monopoly, acting as gatekeepers to knowledge and information.  Because of this they wielded significant social and political power.

Within five years of Gutenberg’s invention the number of printed manuscripts grew to more than 20 million.  By enabling mass production of printed material, Gutenberg had opened the possibility of both book ownership and publishing to the wider community.

Fast forward to today and we can see a similar mechanism acting on the internet.  As the barriers to publishing are removed we have experienced a dramatic shift in who controls mass communication, with the democratisation of the media and the rise of ‘citizen journalist’.

Gutenberg’s invention kick started the renaissance but it also arguably heralded a dark and bloody period of European history.  The religious wars of Protestant and Catholic giving a label to the underlying political conflict of who has control of the written word of God -  the church in Rome or the wider population and their printed bibles.

Since we are in the middle of the current upheaval we will have to wait until we really know what the impact will be.  Maybe Rupert Murdoch was right when he said: 

 “It is dangerous to underestimate the huge changes this revolution will bring …to build and destroy - not just companies, but whole countries.”  

Finally Stephen Fry ended the program with this:  

“I could think of a world without cars and computers but I couldn’t think of a world without the printed word”

The ultimate irony is that the online revolution is serving to diminish printed media.  As newspaper circulations continue to decline many people are predicting the end of print as we know it.  Mind you, looking at how many copies of Metro there were on the train this morning, maybe Stephen Fry is right after all.