“Johann Gutenberg and the Impact of the Printing Press” Johann Gutenberg is credited with the invention of the printing press, a monumental advance in technology that changed the world forever. It has been considered "one of the most important inventions in the history of mankind". What was once a tedious process has become a quick, easy and economical way to produce large quantities of books. It has guaranteed public access to a wealth of knowledge never seen before. The rapid spread of ideas was the catalyst for social and cultural revolutions, the consequences of which are still evident today. The press can be thought of as the 15th century Internet, a mechanism facilitating social, economic, scientific and religious interests. Hypothetically speaking, if the printing press had never been invented, it is possible that there would be no Renaissance, religious reform, or scientific and intellectual revolution, and therefore there would be no modern world as we know it. printing can be understood, it is important to consider what life was like before the printing revolution. All writing and illustrations were the work of one individual working on the text to write it by hand. Not just any old peasant could do the tedious work of a scribe, most of them lived and worked in monasteries, where they silently and diligently copied the text with utmost precision. Because transcription was such a cumbersome task, books were generally owned by monasteries, educational institutions, and wealthy aristocrats. If a family were fortunate enough to own a book, it would most likely be a Bible, as religious texts were most commonly transcribed. Although the transcription of texts by scribes was the mode... middle of paper... ...arena. 500 years ago we moved from manual transcription of texts to a much more efficient duplication process. The Internet has made great strides in making even the printed book obsolete. More and more people are retiring their old encyclopedias in exchange for the Internet's fastest and largest database of information. The comparison between the press and the Internet highlights the model in which the story takes place. Rufus Historie is famous for saying, “History follows a pattern of events that repeat themselves at different times.” It is true. New inventions evolve and replace old ones, new inventions also become dated and are replaced by something newer. The pattern present in the evolution of handwritten texts from the printing press to the Internet represents the cycle of human technological progress; the old out, the new in.