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Gutenberg's printing press hit the scene and shook up the world like [printing press shakes world]

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the glitteriest of snow globes. But how exactly did it do that? Did it stock up

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on truckloads of glitter at Costco? Doubtful. Though, we're sure it grabbed a [printing press goes to Costco]

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bunch of samples while it was there. So Costco trip aside, how did it actually do

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it? Well, Gutenberg's printing press meant more knowledge got into the hands of [person grabs books]

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more people. Previously, Western scholarship and literacy had been

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available only to the educated few, who hoarded knowledge and laughed maniacally [elite person hoards knowledge]

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at their power... Which, sure, that might be just how we think it happened. They probably

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laughed pretty normally. But with printing press, suddenly there were thousands

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of copies of the same book available for anybody with a little extra cash. We [plebeians read]

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hope all those regular Joes laughed maniacally at those hoity-toity hoarders, for once.

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Some scholars have claimed that this was a new democracy of knowledge. It's easy [Oprah gives out knowledge]

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to see how access to books directly led to major movements, like the Protestant

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Reformation and the Renaissance. Well, both of those movements relied on [movements pop up]

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greater availability of knowledge to criticize the powers that be, or powers

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that were, we guess. The printing press also did a lot to [powers fall]

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advance science. Scientists and scholars could now print and publish their

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findings, which made the conversation about Science and Technology global. [scholars publish work]

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Scientists could now build upon each other's work and make some real progress [scientists make pyramid]

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together, rather than a dozen monks hanging out alone in their respective [monks study peas]

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monasteries studying peas. Well, you know what they say--"Two heads are better than

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one"--and thousands of heads are better than two, [brain lifts, bro]

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especially if you're in the shrunken head business. Well, language also became

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a lot more standardized because of the printing press. Before the popular

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printed word, many European languages were primarily spoken because most [people speak languages]

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people couldn't write them. That means there weren't standard ways of spelling

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words or regular grammar rules, so think fewer grammar nazis and more grammar [grammar cowboys take out grammar nazis]

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cowboys on the Wild Wild West. Intellectual property rights also

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started to become a thing. The first copyright laws appeared in the

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15th and 16th centuries when people started to say, "Uh, I spent years writing [people want to have credit for their work]

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that, but sure... You go ahead and take all the credit. That's fine. I'm fine.

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Who needs money anyway? With new ideas and inventions being published and

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disseminated more quickly than ever, people wanted credit and some Benjamins

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for their ideas. Well, this shift included ideas like plagiarism and authorship,

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which had never been that important before. We can thank Gutenberg for the [author has money now]

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laws against pirating the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Gutenberg's press was

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also a new kind of machine, which was made out of interchangeable parts. Much

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later, in the Industrial Revolution, the idea of building machines out of bunches [machine-building process]

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of easily replaceable parts would turn out to be super important. And much later

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still, the machines would treat humans as interchangeable parts by using them as

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batteries in pods. Or, hang on a second... maybe that was The Matrix. We're [humans used as batteries]

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always getting The Matrix and real life confused. [Matrix video]

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