Humanism: Technology, and Money?

Tabarek Aldabbagh,

What is up everyone? How's your day? I have been doing nothing but homework, eating, and sleeping. So, I guess blogging is breaking that routine. Today, I will be blogging about how technology, and especially the printing press, affected the spread of humanism in Europe. I hope you like it!

Old Printer, Drawing
     I chose Jeremiah E. Dittmar's article "Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of the Printing Press" to discuss today. It's clear from the beginning as it goes, "This article examines these spillovers by exploring new, city-level data on the adoption of the movable type printing press in fifteenth-century Europe"(Dittmar, 1134). Though this article does discuss the printing press in Europe, it doesn't formally address the effect on humanism. This is where Cunnigham & Reich's Cultures and Values Volume 2 comes in to link both topics of the printing press and humanism. Chapter 14 focuses on Humanism in Northern Europe and puts emphasis on The Protestant Reformation, a humanism movement that spread like wildfire during the 15th and 16th centuries.  

     Reformation is not the topic that needs to be discussed, and despite the fact that it should be common knowledge at this point, it must be at least mentioned to help this blog be well rounded. This movement basically questioned the authority of the Catholic leadership and spread the idea that religion, knowledge, and art belong to everyone, not just the people in power. The text begins to look into the reasons as to why it took so long. Why didn't the people take action before, when the corruption in the Catholic leadership has always been around. There are many factors, which I needn't discuss, but there is one part that helped escalate the effects of these factors, and that's the printing press. The text puts it simply, "The invention of the printing press and movable type revolutionized Renaissance culture north and south of the Alps in the same way that films, radio, television, and the internet changed the twentieth century"(Cunningham, 332). 

     I want you to remember with me a very famous singer now, that was almost a low-income nobody in 2015, but then had one song blow up on apple music that year, and then won 5 Grammy awards in 2020. You guessed it, the amazing Billie Eilish! This was different than the traditional Hollywood way that another famous singer like Ariana Grande got their fame. Bare with me, there is a point to be made. Now imagine this: It's the fifteenth century in Renaissance Europe, and the only way anyone's writing can get published is if they have connections, power, or money. Then comes the printing press, and not only does it start spreading the knowledge to everyone, but it helps the Reformation movement succeed. Which in turn, lets everyone know that they have the same right to express their thoughts and spread their own knowledge, and the people do just that, using the printing press. "print media also promoted opportunities for the less privileged to obtain education and raise their income"(Dittmar, 1139). Not only that, but more opportunities for people to gain fame, and just like writing music is now, writing novels and poetry was a very important way of art expression in the past. This fame eventually became power, and that is one of the things that kickstarted Martin Luther's journey to becoming the iconic person that he is. The video below explains just how much effect it had, and goes into more detail.
The Northern Renaissance: Crash Course European History #3
Crash Couse, April 26th, 2019

     One thing I appreciated about this article that made me choose it is how clear it is, and how it works in an almost scientific way. The article "compares cities where printers established presses with similar cities where they did not"(Dittmar, 1134). This is very similar to a controlled experiment, where most variables are meant to be the same, and only one variable is different. This really highlights the effects of the changed variable, and in this case, that's the existence of the printing press. Many people dismiss the impact of its existence, saying that many other factors took place in Europe that affected the spread of humanism, which is fair. This is why an article like this is great, as it attempts to remove these said factors and focuses on the printing press, making that argument fail.

WORK CITED
Cunningham & Reich. Cultures and Values Volume 2. Chapter 14.
Crash Course. The Northern Renaissance: Crash Course European History #3, 
Youtube, April 26th, 2019.
Dittmar, Jeremiah E. “INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMIC CHANGE: THE IMPACT OF THE PRINTING PRESS.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 126, no. 3, Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 1133–72. 
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23015698 

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