Lawrence Ludlow on the great inventor and entrepreneur, Johann Gutenberg:
In a previous essay, NASA, the Aerospace Welfare Queen, we explored what happens when technology is grafted onto big-government militarism and the bread-and-circuses mentality of the state. The result? The kind of scientific “achievement” described by Ayn Rand as Project X in her novel Atlas Shrugged. Not very inspiring. But to avoid being as negative as Annie Wilkes in the Steven King film, Misery, this essay will be uplifting. It will focus on a true benefactor of mankind, Johann Gutenberg, the inventor of printing with moveable metal type. Better yet, it will show that his innovative application of printing technologies was not only a showcase example of market anarchism, but a greater source of benefit to mankind than state-sponsored technologies can ever hope to be. It is a story not only of innovation, but of immigration, opposition to politically connected interests, and freedom of information.
Read the rest
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment