The Greatest Invention: The Printing Press or the Internet

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While the printing press and its effects is and will always be a significant innovation in the journalistic world of communication due to it’s ability to transform society and create mass production and circulation of texts and print, the Internet opened society to a world of new, faster and expanded resources that created new opportunities. The significant impact the Internet has had on society is far too heavy to be ranked anything less than the number one innovation of all time.
The printing press came into the world in the 15th century and changed the world of communication that would never again be the same. Society at this time pre-printing press relied on oral communication and hand-copying manuscripts and texts, which proved to be a very long and laborious task. The printing press changed society’s means of communication by massively increasing the quantities of texts that could be produced and distributed, and the time it took to produce them. This machine allowed society the ability to reach a mass audience on an entirely new level. “The circulation of prints and engravings made it possible for a reigning dynasty to impress a personal presence on mass consciousness in a new way,” (Eisenstein, pg 102). This also meant that producing all these manuscripts was a much cheaper process than hiring printers to hand-copy every text. The printing press proved to be a major innovation that helped spread word of anything quickly.
However, the spread of this new technology to other areas took decades to adopt. The printing press’s invention started in Germany around 1450. Other cities in Germany did not begin to establish printing presses for at least five years after the first existed. The rest of Europe did not ado...

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...ficant and monumental moment that sparked the span of numerous communicative innovations in many years to come. One of these inventions that encompassed the root ideas of the printing press was the Internet. The Internet invites people of all backgrounds to have a voice, it offers the versatility and ease of accessing any information from millions of databases by the click of one button and it has great power to connect people in a quick manner. The printing press laid the grounds for significant innovations to spring off of this revolutionary machine to create ways in which communication could further assist and ease the lives of those in society. The Internet creates and offers society many opportunities to assist in the feasibility of daily life, as supported by many scholars and researchers, which earns this invention the number one innovation of all time.

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