Interactivity is as old as Gutenberg - it’s just never had a voice before

In this article, Jeremy Bullmore argues that the internet has not changed mass communication quite so drastically as everyone seems to think.

Interactivity is as old as Gutenberg – it's just never had a voice before

Jeremy Bullmore

There seems to be a widely held and virtually unchallenged belief that, thanks to the internet, the nature of mass communication has changed both radically and irrevocably. Well, yes, it has. And there again, no, it hasn't.

This, in only slightly exaggerated form, is how the argument seems to go.

Starting in 1440 with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg, all significant power has been in the hands of the publisher, the transmitter, the controllers of media. For the next 550...

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