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How the Gutenberg Parenthesis Explains Trumpian Politics
If you’ve long been distressed by Trump’s cries of fake news, you may be particularly disturbed at how Trump’s approach to information has played out during the COVID Pandemic. Largely built on wishful thinking and the denial of not only what experts are saying is true, but also what basic common sense would tell us, this pandemic has spiraled out of control. This has lead to many, many unneeded deaths and an absolute lack of leadership. For those of us taking the virus seriously, it hard to believe that people are going to crowded beaches, amusement parks, and weddings, and still expecting schools to reopen fully in the fall.
So what’s going on here? Why does it seem like all of our methods of determining what reality is have been completely blown up? Why are internet conspiracies spreading so rapidly that they can barely be debunked before the next one is being spread on our Facebook feeds? The answer is that we’re in a new age of information, one dominated by what’s called Secondary Orality, the close of the so-called Gutenberg Parenthesis (credit to Thomas Pettit for coining the term). Let’s talk a little bit about how humans transfer information.
In the history of information, 1439 looms large. The invention of movable type in Europe heralded a new age of publishing, an age where discourse and debate could flourish…