Technology and Society
Introduction

The relationship between technology and society is pivotal in the development of the modern era: so much of the world has been shaped by advancements in technology over the past 500 years that today’s society resembles little of what the world was like prior to when the printing press or gunpowder were invented. This paper will look at two inventions—the printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, and the air pump, invented by Otto von Guericke in 1650—and show how these two inventions impacted the social, political and intellectual order of the day as well as how they interacted with other historical changes. Specifically, it will look at the role of the printing press in the spread of the Protestant Reformation and the role of the air pump in the expansion of technological and mechanical knowledge, which helped pave the way for flight.

The Printing Press

Prior to the printing press, society was at the mercy of the copyists. Manuscripts were hand-copied, hand-written, and if one wanted to “borrow” a text, that person had to copy it out by hand. Clerks and clerics were synonymous, as one of the roles of being a cleric in the Church was to faithfully guard its treasures of religious texts, philosophical texts and theological texts. Ideas were not easily spread around Europe as a result. One could not simply print off a bunch of tracts and pass them around. That all changed with the printing press. Suddenly it was easy to print off information and pass it around, circulate new ideas, and stir up change. That is exactly what happened in the Reformation: the printing press was a pivotal tool in ending the thousand year reign of Christendom. The old order linking the church and the state together through the promotion of one faith was overturned during the Reformation, which benefited mightily from the flow of information made possible via the printing press.

The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) had set the stage for this upheaval, as it was a war between the English and the French that had ramifications throughout Europe. It destabilized both France and England and fostered corruption among the clergy. Joan of Arc was burned to death by her own churchmen who objected to her defense of France against the English (they were sympathetic to the English cause and despised Joan for her boldness in reviving France’s fortunes when it seemed on the brink of defeat). Joan’s martyrdom added fuel to the fire that was the boiling cauldron of unrest throughout the church. Reformers sprang up in England, France, Germany and Switzerland—and they all used the printing press to undermine the Church’s teaching authority. In other words, the printing press helped to foment revolution that ultimately undid the old world order and ushered in the new.

The Air Pump

The air pump was quite different in terms of its impact on society. Rather than help create a revolution, it helped to advance the scientific age and move the modern era more towards a better understanding of how to think about air, air pressure, vacuums and flight. The principles inherent in the air pump created the groundwork for the steam engine and the locomotives that would soon dominate the West and transform the way people thought about travel, commerce, shipping, moving, living, and settling down. The railroad would be such an immense role player in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century that all of modern life would be impacted—and, like the printing...…researcher had made new discoveries about the relationship of the pressure of gas and its volume. Boyle helped to lay the foundation for more examination of the vacuum, which would not really come for another two centuries. His publication however also showed the need for more evaluation. He discussed at length the difficulty of creating air pumps that were consistent in effect and he used scientific examination to see why each pump was different, what parts were affecting what other aspects of the instrument, how it worked (or did not work) under water and why there were so many inconsistencies among his various models, based on scales, measures, bladders, gauges, and other various parts of the pump that were changed out (Shapiro & Schaffer, 1985). All in all, Boyle’s work demonstrated that ideas about nature needed to be exhaustively studied rather than speculated upon by philosophers who were projecting their own beliefs onto nature. That perspective helped to create a new environment in which intense scrutiny of the laws of nature would inevitably lead to the Industrial Revolution.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the relationship between technology and society can be seen starting with the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg—a machine that helped the Protestant Reformation totally transform the religious, social and political order of Europe in the 16th century. The printing press made it easier than ever before for new ideas to be spread: it was like the first iteration of the information highway. That invention was followed by the air pump, which showed how vacuums can be created, which led to the discovery of the electron, the steam engine and so on. Guericke’s and then Boyle’s air pumps showed that nature needed to be studied to be understood—not pontificated about without experimentation.

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