Print media has had an enormous impact on our intellectual culture
ever since Johannes Gutenberg created the first mechanical printing press and
published the first copy of the Gutenberg
Bible in 1455. Ever since then print media has become an essential cultural
tool that has allowed information to cleanly travel through the ages without
having to rely on hazy and forgetful word of mouth. That being said, today even
as digital formats become all the more common around the world, print media is
still essential and very popular as each year more print media is
released and helps shape people’s perceptions and experiences of the world
around them. In this sense print media can define key aspects of the generation
they appear in. If by some chance we were able to travel forward in time, say
150 years or so, and wanted to take a bit of the past with us to share with the
future about our time, some printed media would be an excellent choice to do
so. And that brings me to today’s topic, if I could go into the future like I have
just said, and take only 3 objects of print media, what would they be and why?
First
object I would take is one well known in the first decade of the 2000’s, a copy
of the Deathly Hollows, book 6 of the Harry Potter series. Now why would I take
this book you might ask? It’s not because it was my favorite series or
even my favorite book in the series. Harry Potter is a character everyone in my
generation knows. Whether the read the books or not, you have heard about him
and maybe even seen the movies. Anybody you ask will be able to give you even
just the slightest bit of knowledge on who Harry Potter is and whether the
series was good or not. The series may never become classic literature, or it
might, either way no one can deny that it was a very big phenomenon of our
generation and has shaped many people’s perceptions of good literature in our
time.
The
next object of print media I’d take is book 1 of Naruto. I’m not a huge fan of
Naruto, I prefer One Piece or FairyTail honestly, but I have kept up with the
story over the years. The way I see it a lot of people in our generation have
begun to enjoy many creations from outside countries as media becomes more
easily accessible. The fact that Japanese Manga’s and Animes have done so well
in the American market and are growing still is proof that we are becoming worldlier
and that we are being affected and shaped by media from even outside our
culture. Naruto is another character that not everyone may follow in his story
but has become well known enough for most Americans below 30 or 40 to at least
recognize his name. This alone I think makes it relevant enough to take and
share with the future, and compare it to see how much outside media is enjoyed
then compared to now.
For my
last piece of print media I’d Take the latest edition of the New York Times.
Newspapers are print media too and are very important sources of worldly
information as long as you don’t take everything at face value. They are good
for at least realizing what is happening throughout our world recently and
because of that, would be a treasure to take to the future. It would be like
getting an almost firsthand view to the events of the past without the usual distortions
information might receive over 150 years. I’m sure someone in the future would
find what’s going on here today interesting as it would be a firsthand account,
something they would never see in their accounts of the past. Unless they
already had a copy of course.
