On Thursday, December 12th, I had the opportunity to attend a small classics exhibit with my peers on the lower floor area of the Lutnick Library. I was not able to hear the lecture that one of my peers gave to us all too well, but looking around, it was probably mostly about the history of printing and half millenia old artifacts.
I had the opportunity to read about Johannes Trithemius, who was against the revolutionary technology of printing and who was for the tradition of hand-copying. I can see where Trithemius is coming from, he would like to keep old traditions because they had values and lessons to learn from, such as having the determination to finish a long process of copying an entire book. I feel that Trithemius would have also argued that a process like this would keep monks and religious figures busy, and away from vices such as laziness. I did not find it surprising at all that Trithemius would be a hypocrite, as he ended up printing works of his own.
During my reading of Trithemius, I was able to think of a connection to myself and my learning in Elementary Latin. Sometimes, I tend to be lazy and use shortcuts for my assignments, such as using Google which is a way easier process of finding my answers I want. Instead of manually going back on the back of my book, trying to remember my alphabetical order, and slowly going down in the column of the letter section, it is so much easier to type the word I want onto Google and find my answer immediately. Now I know that Google is supposed to be shunned, but I can’t help but use it because it is so much more efficient in terms of time, and time is something that is precious, especially in a rigorous college environment. Modern Johannes Trithemius would also tell me to shun such a shortcut, but he would probably do it too if he had the option to do so, and if he was short on time. I still need to work on the habit of gritting my teeth and doing it the old-fashioned way.
With the ability of mass production of books, such as Bibles, the accessibility was not always easy. One problem that stood in the way of understanding books was literacy and education, and these roadblocks made it so that only Christian figures were able to use the Bible. I would think that with a resource available to the public, but them not being able to read it, would invoke for more education access to the public. I think that this theory is true, since one of the information plates on the wall stated that scholarship flourished due to “the mass influx of printed material”. I believe that with more books becoming more available to the public, not only was there an increase in supplies, but it also allowed for easier access to the public and a way to encourage people to learn more about education and literacy.
In a bigger picture, perhaps if we had more resources such as computers, more available and less costly, we can see an influx in science and technology.