I skipped the meeting, but the Memos showed that Larry Jaques
wrote on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:15:25
-0800 in rec.crafts.metalworking :
On Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:56:56 -0800, the infamous Gunner Asch
scrawled the following:
On Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:06:33 -0500, Bob Engelhardt
wrote:
Larry Jaques wrote:
[on on-topic reply]
Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other
men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life.
--Jesse Lee Bennett

I saw a TV documentary once, about the introduction of the printing
press. What stuck with me was that the printing press made what had
been closely-held information widely distributed. In fact, initially
the predominant genre was how-to books. Knowledge that only guild
members had previously had access to was now available to the public.

Fast forward 300 years, or however long it's been. Today the Internet
has trumped books in that regard. Not only is the information
available, it's easily found. That was/is the Achilles heel of books -
the knowledge may be in a book /somewhere/, but finding it was something
else. The Internet is changing the world as much as the printing press did.

The printing press made Bibles and religious tracts readily available to
the masses. The flock could now read what only the priests had
previously had a lock on.

Once the translations into the vernacular had been made. A
process which had started before the printing press I might add.

Yeah, there was that downside of the press, too. Once the SOBs
got their bibles in mass-production, gazillions of missionaries went
hog wild. The rest is history. (Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, etc.)

Let me see, Gutenberg did his printing starting in 1450, the first
Crusade was launched in 1095 and the last in 1270, and the Inquisition
was 1478-1834 (officially. No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition!).
Yep, I can see the link between the printing press and the Crusades
and Inquisition.

It really hurt the control the Church had over the masses and was
considered the Devils Tool by some of the Church hierarchy...some.

Anything which takes potential money out of the church's pocket is
evil and must be destroyed! They can't have their scams taken over by
someone else, now can they?

I seem to recall of a company which made sure that none of their
employees could read. Something about not wanting them to be reading
_any_ books and getting ideas above their station.

cie l'vie.

pyotr

--
pyotr filipivich
We will drink no whiskey before its nine.
It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!