#21 Impact of Technology 1 - Printing Press
Printing the innovation on people, society and organization
TL;DR
This is the first of a three-part series on how new technologies impact society, industry, and organizational structures. Generative AI is transforming companies, requiring new training and hires. Historically, the printing press, popularized by Gutenberg in 1440, revolutionized communication and society, driving economic growth and workforce changes. HR professionals can learn from these shifts to better manage current technological changes.
With the advancement of Generative AI, companies are undergoing various transformations at the organizational level. What sort of training should the sales department provide to employees to facilitate communication with customers using tools like ChatGPT? What type of talent should the Chief Investment Officer hire for the finance department to leverage GenAI for faster due diligence assessment? How will the power balance between the engineering teams and business sides change with the introduction of GenAI-powered software?
In this three-part series, we will reflect on the impact that new technologies have had on society, industry and companies’ organizational structures. We will also learn about how HR leaders can support organizational transformation. For the first part of the series, let’s focus on one groundbreaking technology — the printing press.
Printing Press
The printing press was known to be invented by the goldsmith Johannes Guthenberg around 1440. However, while Guthenberg democratized the printing press, more precisely movable type, the first printing technology was invented in China as early as the 3rd century AD. The technology was known as woodblock printing, where ink is transferred from a carved wooden surface to paper. Then movable type was invented in China again around 1040 AD during the Northern Song dynasty. This is groundbreaking because it eliminated the need for craftsmen to manually copy documents. Instead of craftsmen carving wood, printers would arrange individual blocks, each bearing a single letter or symbol, to create printed text. Using this technology, a Korean Buddhist document called jikji was printed in 1378, 78 years before Gutenberg began his work on the printing press.
However, it wasn’t widely adopted due to the complexity of Chinese characters. Imagine needing several thousand pieces. What if rare characters apperared several times on the same page? To print a page, the printer needs multiple pieces of characters to cover one page. There are 50,000 Chinese characters1. Although the frequency differs, they needed to keep several pieces for each character, which would require a lot of money to make such pieces, vast space to store the pieces, and time to find the right piece for each character.
On the other hand, Western alphabets require only 26 characters, making it much easier for printers to prepare a page compared to their Asian counterparts could. Additionally, other technologies such as mass paper production and environmental factors like the rising demand for education set the scene for the invention. The time was ripe. Under such favorable conditions, Gutenberg, a professional goldsmith, invented the printing press. The Gutenberg Bible, produced with the new technology, spread the biblical teachings and printing technology across Europe in the blink of an eye.
Impact on People, Organization, and Society
Now, let’s see how the advent of printing press might have affected people, organization, and society from human resources practices point of view.
Economical Dynamics
The printing press brought a significant impact on the economy. Dittmar researched the population of European cities that adopted the printing press during 1450-1500 and those that did not. According to his research, cities that adopted the printing press experienced a population growth of at least 20 percentage points, up to 78%, during 1500-1600 compared to cities that did not during the same period2. The printing press became a strong growth driver.
In a modern business context, this would have a significant impact on HR people’s responsibilities. Such economic changes could lead to more investment, improved living standards, increased individual consumption, immigration inflow, among other effects. These changes in the labor market eventually empower job seekers and affects mid- and long-term HR strategies.
Workforce Dynamics
Due to the advent of the printing press, necessary skills changed dramatically and new types of work emerged:
Directly related to printing: printers, typesetters, bookbinders
Adjacent industry: ink makers, papermakers
Due to the surge of printed materials: booksellers, publishers, librarians, editors, translators, authors
This change of workforce dynamics resulted in more various career paths. Advancement in printing technology led to the printing of more books, which improved literacy levels. Consequently, more business education like bookkeeping and accounting emerged, and it widened people’s career choices (Dittmar 2011).
HR professionals should be aware that changes in skills required in job market can affect the workforce demographics. For example, when the talent pool for emerging jobs has and unbalanced gender split or ethnicity structure, HR needs to be aware of that and to make an effort to counterbalance it. New technologies often create obsolete jobs. It is critical to decide how to deal with employees in such occupations.
Ways of Working
The printing press also changed how people communicate. During the introduction of the printing press, merchants’ manuals became more common. Double-entry bookkeeping, often cited as an important innovation for humanities, appeared in 1494 (Dittmar 2011). The printing press contributed to the fast spread of best practices in business. It also contributed to the standardization of language use. When Martin Luther published the three treatises, there were sixty-odd languages with numerous dialects, many of which were not mutually understandable. Luther did not choose his native language but instead chose a hybrid language that mixed the languages of different regions so that his publications would be understood all over the German-speaking regions3.
This phenomenon is similar to the situation when SaaS solutions become a norm, with which many companies start to share more or less the same workflows and common terminologies. It’s important for HR professionals to know how the technology in question will change ways of working.
Organizational Dynamics
The printing press brought an impact on the power balance as well. Before the invention of the printing press, the Church held strong power in diffusion of knowledge. In fact, Luther was not the first one to challenge the Catholic Church. The Czech reformer Jan Hus attempted the same, but the Chuch suppressed his ideas and burned Hus as a heretic in 1415. However, Luther’s three pamphlets were copied and sold too quickly for the Church to suppress (Burke 2016). The consequence was the Reformation, and the Catholic Church was no longer the ‘single source of truth’ for Europeans.
HR leaders need to know how new technologies shift power from one department to another. This shift will affect various aspects of organizational matters such as organizational design and employees’ career path.
Drawbacks
The invention of technology brings not only positive changes but also negative ones that HR leaders should be aware of. Thanks to the printing press, disseminating information became easier. People with political agenda found the new media a good way to propagate their ideas. It is important for HR people to regulate the usage of new technologies so that the technologies are used for good.
Conclusion
As you can see, HR professionals can prepare for changes caused by technological inventions by studying history and how societies reacted to them. Thanks to the Internet, now we can diffuse and receive best practices and failures without waiting for physically printed books. In the next post, we will study another technological development in a different period: the Industrial Revolution.
"How many characters are there?" BBC Languages. Accessed July 6, 2024 2024. https://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/real_chinese/mini_guides/characters/characters_
Dittmar, Jeremiah E. “Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of the Printing Press.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 126, No. 3 (August 2011): 1133-72. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23015698
Burke, Peter. "Three Print Revolutions." In Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities, and Change, edited by Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, and Peter Kornicki, 13-20. Brill, 2016. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w8h246.6