One part of our class in the EPI building today that really struck me was when someone asked the professor, “why not just use a digital printer?” and while answering the question, the tone of her voice completely changed. In her answer you could really tell that the printing press meant a lot to her. Her words were not defensive of it, but rather were loving and sentimental. She emphasized how with the printing press you can really see all the work that is put into the process of printing, as opposed to the digital printer where you just press one button and you are done.

Just as I never thought of the book as evolving from stone tablets, I never really connected the modern digital printer to the much older printing press. In hindsight it seems stupid how I could not have made that connection sooner. But I think the fact that I was up close seeing exactly how a printing press worked today made me realize just how similar it actually is to digital printing. After reading some chapters in the book, Sound Recording, I found a metaphor connecting earlier music technology to CD’s that made me think about the connection between printing presses and digital printers. “The CD can be seen as offering merely incremental improvements over the previous generations of technology” (Morton 188). Now a days, most people view digital printing as such a novel phenomenon. Of course it is much easier and faster than using a printing press, however, when you think about it, how much thought was really put into the invention of the digital printer as opposed to the invention of the printing press? Just like the CD is the digital printer not just a “mere incremental improvement over previous generations of technology?”