As technology progresses, we often find that certain areas of an industry, or even an entire industry, become obsolete.  We have seen this happen recently with the recording industry and as ebooks and self-publishing become more popular, certain jobs in book publishing are becoming harder to find.  This is not a new trend, though.  It has happened throughout history, as technology has moved forward.  One advancement in book publishing that has had this effect was the creation of the printing technique called “stereotyping.”  Nicole Howard notes that this technique was disliked by compositors, whose jobs became obsolete as a result of the advancement.  Compositors were once held in high regard for their knowledge of grammar, as they often corrected the grammar, spelling, and punctuation of the texts they edited, including Milton and Shakespeare.  Whether this positive or negative is not important; what is important is that, after stereotyping, compositors ceased to be involved in the process at all.

With the speed at which technology is advancing today, I wonder what other jobs will soon become obsolete.

After looking at a lithograph up close in class on Tuesday I have a whole new appreciation for lithographs. I couldn’t believe how detailed the picture was, it was almost as if it was drawn by hand. Seeing the image in person was just so much different than looking at it online but you can still see the incredible amount of work and detail that went into the picture. Even the people in the background of the picture have faces and distinct body outlines, I wasn’t expecting that at all for this time period and for this level of technology.

http://cdm.lafayette.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/mdl-prints&CISOPTR=1468&CISOBOX=1&REC=14

I found this interesting website that sells, among many other interesting items, old cast iron book presses.  Although these types of presses have since fallen out of fashion, I find it interesting that there are people still interested in them, if not for their original purpose then for the historical value.  The fact that their historical value is so revered demonstrates how important these presses were in moving book publishing technology forward.

If later technology had been available to the pioneers of the book making field the result wouldn’t be good. So much of the value in old Books is the artistry required in their production. Some of the pre-incunabula work we looked at was absolutely breathtaking because someone had taken the time and the effort to hand write it. Think for a moment about how much effort it takes to hand write several pages and then magnify that by the length of some of the works, the artistry in the lettering and the artistry on the pages themselves. How much value would these early works have had if they were printed with a Gutenberg press, or even a modern inkjet printer?

With the technology available to us now the value in the work has shifted, the artistry of the book is not valued but the artistry of the language on the page. In many ways the technology of the printing press and subsequent variations of the printing press have shifted the value of the work to the author and their craft. Is this not better for language and writers now that their work is not being overshadowed by the book it is contained in? In some ways this is a conundrum, the Author and their true meaning behind the words they have painstakingly crafted are the focal point. But if the reverse is true and printing technology remained in the pre-press era the artistic value of the books decreases and the  written word becomes secondary. Therefore, the best outcome is somewhere in the middle of the technological growth of printing, when written word and artistry meet in the middle.