Marshall McLuhan, in his essay “The Gutenberg Galaxy” (1962), analyzes the profound impact that printing had on the mental and cultural structure of the West. According to McLuhan, the invention of printing not only revolutionized communication, but also radically changed the way human beings perceive and organize reality. Print, as a linear, sequential and visual medium, fostered the emergence of analytical, rational and individualistic thinking, in contrast to the previous oral culture, which was more collective, fluid and sensory.
The printed word, with its specialized intensity, broke the bonds of medieval guilds and monasteries, creating intensely individualistic patterns of initiative and monopoly. With typography, the written word became fixed, repeatable and standardized, qualities that encouraged the development of modern science, codified law, subjective consciousness and the centrality of the individual. McLuhan sees in the “Gutenberg Galaxy” a historical epoch in which the human mind was structured according to typographic logic: everything had to be orderly, numerable, measurable. Printing thus created the conditions for the emergence of critical thinking, intellectual autonomy and ideological pluralism, but it also introduced a form of alienation from the sensory and communal dimensions of human experience. McLuhan sees print as the engine of a profound cognitive transformation: it created modern man, but it also separated him from the totality of his perceptions. His reflections complement the historical view of the impact of print by showing how a technology can shape not only society but also the mind itself.
Italiano