I remember reading a book called The Cloister and the Hearth many years ago. It gives a fairly good picture of life at the time when the Middle Ages were giving way to the Renaissance.
In a passage that stood out for me, manuscript copier Gerard discovers that movable type is rapidly spreading through Europe.
He is terrified, as he sees that his profession is a sunset industry.
Of course, duchesses and such like would still want illuminated manuscripts . But these manuscripts would only be art objects, as an antique typewriter is today.
The bread-and-butter of that guy’s industry – the fact that manuscripts had to be copied out in longhand and often artfully decorated – was gone.
Now, did that mean that publishing folded? Quite the opposite – movable type made literacy a far more important value than it had ever been before. Literacy created a huge new public for books. Suddenly duchesses were not so important any more. Eventually, “illiterate” became a term of abuse instead of a description of the normal state of the populace.
The question for those who must support ourselves is, where is the money? From what I can tell, there is still a market for information services, but one must focus increasingly on helping specialty markets sort information.
I remember the days, 50 years ago, when we all gathered round the TV to watch CBC or CTV News. We watched them because they were the only news services available. We read the London Free Press because it was the only paper sold on the street.
Today I can read the South China Morning Post or the Sydney Herald, and watch news from all over on line. As the population ages, more and more people who are familiar with Internet use will be on line.
Why will many people need guidance about what to spend their time on? Time is the quantity that is limited today, not information.
And until the Time Machine is invented, time is going to stay limited.
Denyse O’Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

