The Church, in effect, operated a centralized system of distribution. They created their official versions of their stories in council, and then used the hierarchical structure of the Church to ensure that everyone got that same version. They were aided in this partly by the Church’s monopoly over education and books. Back then, books were all written by hand in calligraphy, which was an extremely labor intensive process. Monasteries developed what were called scriptoria, which were rooms where monks toiled away copying entire manuscripts by hand, and illuminating them with images and decoration. A single book might take as much as a year for a complete transcription to be made. This meant that books were of extremely high value. The only people who could afford to possess them were Churches and nobility. The Church thus not only had control over the content of these books (since monks were doing the transcribing), but it in fact owned the vast majority and controlled access to them.
The development of the movable type printing press in the middle of the 15th century turned this perfectly controlled centralized distribution system upside down. No longer was the Church the sole possessor of the ability to make and distribute stories in a fixed format. One of Gutenberg’s first printed works was, in fact, the Bible. Printing presses could duplicate manuscripts hundreds of times faster and cheaper than scriptoria, and required far less skilled laborers to operate. Bibles, along with classics of antiquity, were quickly translated out of Latin and into the vernacular languages of the various parts of Europe. People besides nobles could afford to buy books, and even put together libraries. Control began to slip away from the Church as information and stories could now be shared with much more speed and ease by circumventing its centralized hierarchical distribution with independent lateral distribution centers. Cracks in the edifice of the Church began to show as the printing press accelerated both the Protestant Reformation and the eventual Scientific Revolution – both of which were mainly characterized by promoting alternate versions of Christian stories and teachings.
The rise of digital and network technology at the end of the 20th century has created a situation with striking similarities to that caused by the printing press. Media, up until very recent times, was controlled by a handful of large media companies, such as newspapers, television networks, movie studios, publishing houses and record labels. Only rather wealthy and large corporations were able to produce and distribute cultural artifacts (stories). Through retail stores and other technologies, they were able to maintain a more or less centralized system of distribution, which was ubiquitous enough that there was really no escaping it. Media companies can even be thought of as having clergy: news anchormen, actors, directors, producers, editors, etc. But as home computers suddenly became affordable, digital technology enabled the fast and virtually costless duplication of an assortment of cultural artifacts which had formerly been the sole arena of major media companies. Increasingly widespread internet access brought about the perfect means of lateral distribution. Through both web sites and peer-to-peer file sharing networks, individuals are effectively able to circumvent the centralized hierarchical distribution systems of major media companies.
The question remains what effect this new ability to create, copy and transmit culturally significant stories will have on the culture at large. The mental and spiritual monopoly of the Catholic Church over Europe (and the world) was fatally fractured by the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. And some of the most important underpinnings of our modern culture can be traced back to these roots. Perhaps our age will see a type of Media Reformation, with equally far reaching results.
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