The digitization of reading and writing and their cultural impact

We had found ourselves in the “Gutenberg-Galaxy” before the digitalization made its rise. The development of the book printing by Johannes Gutenberg and developments based on it as well as the following industrialization of printing are decisive for the expansion of the cultural revolution. It has meanwhile been transformed, upgraded and replaced by something which has been called “Turing Galaxy”. One of the most important changes is the automatic processing of data, the program-controlled production or manipulation of texts, images, sounds, formulas, tables and videos. The internet has led us to new distribution channels. The paper shows which trends of development concerning the cultural skills of writing and reading have been realized up to now as a result of the digitalization. Three aspects of development will be discussed: how the way of writing has changed to the present moment by the means of automation, multimodality and networking.

We had found ourselves in the “Gutenberg-Galaxy” before the digitalization made its rise. The development of the book printing by Johannes Gutenberg and developments based on it as well as the following industrialization of printing are decisive for the expansion of the cultural revolution. It has meanwhile been transformed, upgraded and replaced by something which has been called “Turing Galaxy”. One of the most important changes is the automatic processing of data, the program-controlled production or manipulation of texts, images, sounds, formulas, tables and videos. The internet has led us to new distribution channels. The paper shows which trends of development concerning the cultural skills of writing and reading have been realized up to now as a result of the digitalization. Three aspects of development will be discussed: how the way of writing has changed to the present moment by the means of automation, multimodality and networking.