From the Gutenberg Galaxy to the Googletenberg Universe

We do not need to venture anywhere else in order to understand electronic reading than to the turning-points in the history of printed books. What is happening right now with books, in our age of digitalization, seems to have happened before in the history of the written word. We only need to look for these events in the periods of change in the way in which writing presents itself.
As can be seen, through centuries, the role of Johannes Gutenberg was seen in one way in the first centuries of the print book, then in another way in the historical period of the mass-produced book, and yet differently today, in the virtual reality of the e-book, in a global system in which the invention of printing is not practically defining anymore – in any formal sense – for the book, since the product is not physically manufactured anymore. As an outstanding personality of book culture and the history of the written word, Gutenberg is also ineludible in the cultural and technical context of the e-book. It is understandable, however, that, from an e-book perspective, he is not primarily interesting as an inventor in the technical sense, but as an innovator, or as an influential personality who was able to produce major changes in a traditional system which has been in existence for centuries and even millennia.