The development of information technology reminds me in many ways of the
discovery of the printing press. They both have given rise to revolutionary new
ways of disseminating information faster and on a broader scale. In the 15th
century, no one had any awareness of the enormous impact that printing was
to have. The first printed works were remarkably similar in appearance to the
manuscripts that preceded them, and have consequently been termed „cradle
books” (incunabula). Printing technology’s effect on the community at large
was only gradual, and in the initial stages affected the dissemination of learning
and culture only to a minor degree. This had little to do with the new ways
of producing information or the form the information was in; it was mainly
because only few people had access to education and culture. Researchers
were few in number. Long after the rise of printing, academics were still exchanging
ideas and research results by journeying to do so in person or by
corresponding with each other. It was the way they had always transmitted
their knowledge, and they remained true to the tradition.
It was only after the rise of the middle classes in the middle of the 17th century
and the impetus this gave academic learning that the need for transmission
of knowledge on a broader scale began to be felt.1 The first academic
journals appeared in 1665: the Journal des Sçavants in France and the Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society of London in England. In the
Netherlands, the Nouvelles de la République appeared in 1684. Journals
made it possible for scholars to transmit their research results to a much larger
number of scholars than was possible via personal correspondence or personal
contacts. The academic journal quickly became a new medium for
broad-scale presentation of research data and unambiguous accreditation and
quality control of research results. It boosted the transmission of academic information
enormously while at the same time boosting its quality
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