OPINION
Sir Bob Jones
nopunchespulled.com
A recently published book by Jeff Jarvis, a New York University Professor of Journalism, “The Gutenberg Parenthesis” came under justified ridicule for some of its sweeping statements. I’m certainly not recommending it.
However, it did flush up one curiosity, namely that circa 1500 very few books numbered their pages. Hitherto this had not occurred to anyone.
With fiction and the use of bookmarks, now freely available in bookshops and libraries, page numbering is not critical. But it certainly is with non-fiction.
One could write a set of encyclopedias on such “building a better mousetrap” plainly obvious once done, simple changes in all aspects of life.
Mind you, they don’t always proceed smoothly and can have unintended consequences.
Take the creation of various religions, which in the case of Christianity has been and remains, a seemingly never-ending evolvement. The invention of the confessional for example, led to dire unintended consequences.
Originally the priest sat facing the confesser, knees to knees. For over a century, the church ignored the bitter protests from confessers of the priest thrusting his hand up between their legs, rich pickings as underwear was still 800 years from being invented.
Eventually, under pressure the church acted and came up with the face-value sensible, dividing wall concept, to prevent this. But as we know, this bore devastating consequences as the priests simply transferred their sexual assaults to outside the confessional with much more fulfilling opportunities.
Sometimes obvious innovations meet resistance. A classic example was the invention of screw-tops instead of corks for wine bottles, plainly an excellent idea.
But the wine world is, next to the art scene, more saturated in bullshit and contrived snobbery than any other activity and to the credit of women, totally a male phenomenon.
I delight in reading the unmatched nonsense produced by wine reviewers.
Still, it provides some consolation for the vineyards’ owners, most of whom deservedly lose money as a result of their absurd desire to “have their own labels”.
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