Nicholas Carr, in a blog post titled “Questioning Accidentalism”
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The crucial refinements in the form of the scribal book - punctuation marks, paragraph divisions, chapter divisions, tables of contents, etc. - were all expressions of human desire and need, not the results of random technological or economic accidents. Yes, when Gutenberg invented his press, he was working within the limits of technological possibility. But his inspiration came from his desire, which was also a broad desire on the part of society as a whole, to widen the availability of the codex and other written works. The printing press did not create people’s desire to read books; people’s desire to read books created the printing press. To say that the printed book was an accident is not only profoundly cynical; it’s profoundly foolish.
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