Hieronimo Squarciafico
Hieronimo Squarciafico was a 15th-century Venetian editor, who worked for the Italian humanist and printer Aldus Manutius, the founder of the Aldine Press at Venice.[1][2] Squarciafico is best known for bemoaning the printing press in an aphorism that reads as a pithy summation of his contemporaries' concerns over the spread of printed works: "Abundance of books makes men less studious".[3] Initially, in 1477, he wrote enthusiastically about the works he was engaged in having printed.[4] Yet, a few years later, in 1481, Squarciafico appeared to hold a more skeptical view when he imagined a discussion between the spirits of the great authors of the past being held in the Elysian Fields in which some of them lauded the craft of printing; while others complained that "printing had fallen into the hands of unlettered men, who corrupted almost everything";[4] and yet still others lamented that "their works would perish if they were not printed, since this art compels all writers to give way to it".[5]
Squarciafico remains relevant today in criticisms of modern electronic culture;[3] he has, in recent times, been quoted by theologian Walter J. Ong and technology critic Nicholas G. Carr, among others.[6][7]
Notes
- ↑ Lowry 1979, p. 36–37
- ↑ Lowry 1979, p. 192
- 1 2 Lowry 1979, p. 31
- 1 2 Lowry 1979, p. 29
- ↑ Lowry 1979, p. 219
- ↑ Ong 1982, p. 79
- ↑ Carr, Nicholas (July 2008), "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", The Atlantic 301 (6), retrieved 2008-10-06
Bibliography
- Ong, Walter J. (1982), Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London: Methuen Publishing
- Lowry, Martin J.C. (1979), The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press