Information Overload: The Prequel

Lauryn · Post by **Lauryn** » Fri December 3rd, 2010, 3:48 pm

I was scrolling through the doings on my Facebook account, and found a link to this article:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas ... ?page=full

On Facebook - Who'd'a'thunk? But it was an intriguing article, and made sense of something I had read in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall about a man in France making a memory machine.

fljustice · Post by **fljustice** » Fri December 3rd, 2010, 4:24 pm

Very interesting! Thanks for the link, Lauryn. I loved the idea that they were complaining of info overload in A.D. 1.

Margaret · Post by **Margaret** » Sat December 4th, 2010, 7:09 am

Ha! I love it. What a great article. One thing she doesn't mention is that the Protestant revolution would not have happened (or at least not in the same way) without the printing press. Luther published tons of short pamphlets and flyers. Although the peasant classes might not be able to read, the priests who served peasant communities could, and many of them agreed with Luther and passed his views on to their flocks. Also, printing presses were used for one-sheet flyers that were mostly wood-block pictures (some very rude ones about the pope, for example) with a few words at the bottom that were not essential in conveying the message - kind of like TV commercials nowadays that can be understood even if the viewer pushes the mute button.

LoveHistory · Post by **LoveHistory** » Sat December 4th, 2010, 5:38 pm

Nice to know that this feeling is older than we are.

I found a link after the article a bit more interesting though. Google is going to launch an eBook store.