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| Begins |
September 12, 2007
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| Email |
oezlem@mediaintransition.com
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| Category |
Business: Internet
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| Category 2 |
Computers: Multimedia
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| Contact |
Karlstrasse 54
80333 Munich
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| Description |
Germany is known in the world as the maker of precise mechanical devices, being Europe’s industrial center and harboring a centuries-old tradition of trades. It is an environment in which progress is seen as progress in technology and language is often rendered in technical terms. Germany’s poets are their engineers.
Considering this background, we found a unifying metaphor of communication and engineering for our conference in the person of Johannes Gutenberg – an inventor of a communication machine [Movable Type]. Gutenberg was the man of his century, igniting an information revolution leading to the Renaissance. The printing press business is precisely where Germany’s industrial economy launched. Printing presses required precision machinery, creating Germany’s engineering industry. Research in printing inks conceived the German chemical industry etc. You could make the case, therefore, that Germany derived its industrial power from an information need.
The Internet is that new kind of movable type, facilitating a similar information revolution – falling communication costs are changing the game: from industrial to information age.
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