Gutenberg, Word, and Sora

Social challenges and technological innovations

Browse the history section of any large bookstore, and you will quickly see that many history readers enjoy the subject as a means of being transported to another time and place. Sometimes, even more than novels, history enables us to feel what life was like as a Roman soldier, British aristocrat, or American Frontiersman and to imagine ourselves in those environments. 

But there are limits! Somehow, history helps me imagine being a Cold War spy or an Arctic explorer, but I still struggle to imagine life as a subsistence farmer before the Industrial Revolution. A whole life of raising the same crops and livestock? Was starvation a blessing or a curse? The truth is that some inventions are so impactful that subsequent generations lose touch with those born before them, for better or worse. Thankfully, the agricultural improvements of the last two centuries make me unable to relate to those who struggled to eat. 

For me, life before Gutenberg’s printing press also falls into this category. Though only invented in the 15th century, I can more easily imagine myself marching alongside Alexander in Thebes than sitting around after the battle with no media other than handwritten posters and religious books. What really did people do? How critical was sheer gossip to society? What crazy beliefs would I have hatched on my own, lost in thought (probably attending the crops I can’t picture)? 

Today, everyone tells us that similar changes are on our horizon - GenAI! Virtual reality! Autonomous vehicles! Robots! - but only a handful of inventions ever truly change the world, and forecasting which ones will is nigh-on impossible. Most often, this is because forecasting technological developments is hopeless (how long have you been waiting for autonomous vehicles?). Sometimes, though, the challenge in anticipating a technology’s impact is social, not technological. 

Consider the case of the word processor. Now, no one should claim that the invention of digital word processors in the late 20th century was equivalent to Gutenberg’s printing press. But, word processors (and more specifically, Microsoft Word, which began in 1984 but became prominent with Windows in the 1990s) quickly replaced other means of typing (namely, the typewriter) and became the de facto means of writing, first on paper, then digitally. There are still other means; Robert Caro collects his preferred model, a Smith Corona Electra 210, and has 10 of them so he can rotate them for repairs. But, long ago, most of us gave up penmanship and typewriters for Word (or Google Docs, Apple’s Pages, etc.). 

And it’s easy to see why. From spell-checking to formatting, it’s far easier to use computers than a typewriter, let alone writing by hand. And the “Delete” key! No more wasting pages. Though I’m not aware of a good academic study on the question, I feel it’s fair to say that digital computer processors make it much, much easier to type.

This, of course, is part and parcel of the broader digital revolution. It’s possible (and increasingly common) to write a book without ever printing an actual page. Today, most of what we write never makes it into physical form. All of this lowers the entry barriers to writing and publishing. Going even further, Substack continues the trend, as does self-publishing, which Amazon has supercharged. Put differently, word processors and the subsequent trend they sparked democratized writing, allowing anyone (including yours truly) to write more. 

But, apropos to Gutenberg, has this improved the quality of things we read? I’m not aware of anyone who thinks so. No one has said, “The novel really owes a lot to the invention of Word.” In fact, it’s widely agreed that journalism is being automated, and novel sales, like all book sales, continue to stall, and that students are becoming, if anything, worse at communicating via the written word.

By contrast, Gutenberg’s press did change media for the better. The printing press enabled us to have novels, print newspapers, and circulate pamphlets, ultimately creating the media world as we think of it (or, more specifically, as we thought of it before television). This is not to say that the printing press didn’t usher in a load of garbage (of course it did!). But, it is to say that we’re all greatly indebted to the innovation and that pretty much all of us agree on the subject. 

Why did Word not do something similar, albeit on a smaller scale? For an academic studying innovation, Word’s impotence is surprising for three reasons: First, lowering the barrier to entry should lead to increased quantity. Assuming that the talent that comes in is normally distributed (read, not all crap), then the sheer increase in quantity ought to include some brilliant works. Put differently, given enough writers, statistically speaking, one of them ought to be as good as Shakespeare.

Second, competition itself increases quality. Given higher volumes, writers will have to work harder to get their books read, so the result should be that the most popular books will be of higher quality than they would have been in a world where only a few can write. 

Third, such a significant supply increase ought to lead to niche markets. So, even if the average quality is roughly the same, readers will be able to find the exact type of works that appeal to them and, therefore, feel that the “market” has improved. 

Despite this strong prior, there is no evidence that any of this has happened. How can this be? Let me suggest two reasons.

First, while it may or may not be normally distributed, the quality that came in is not as good as what came before. Charles Dickens, the man who grew up in a poor house yet still wrote some of the greatest novels of all time, probably would have chiseled them in stone if he had to. The person who would not have typed up a novel on a typewriter but will use Pages to write it is unlikely to have the same level of passion or talent. So, while word processors may have enticed some good writers, on average, the addition to the “supply” of writers was not as good as the existing pool.

Second, the sheer increase in volume makes it harder to distinguish the good writers from the not-quite-good writers. Having so much stuff written and published (“content”) makes it much harder for the market to sort out quality. In a world with only a few films a year, it makes sense to have an awards show (e.g., the Oscars). But, if billions of videos are created, as in the case of YouTube and TikTok, there is no meaningful “best video of the year” because there are too many different videos - beyond “most viewed,” what could the award mean?

As a result, when the market is flooded with this much content, there may be a Shakespeare self-publishing on Amazon somewhere, but who could know? Our only hope to find that person is that some important agent finds her and takes a risk on marketing her work. But, when the agent himself is buried under manuscripts, the 21st-century Shakespeare will likely remain lost to us.

I don’t wish to be cynical here - I do believe that markets are a fantastic way to improve the quality of markets through competition. But, I also think they can be overwhelmed by a glut, and it seems that this is manifestly what has happened.

But is this an isolated case? Is word the only thing like this? Alas, no. Music has seen something similar with Pro Tools, a software released in 1989 that enabled amateur musicians to record songs at home, even allowing users to overlay different instruments on them. Similar to Word, it destroyed many smaller studios and increased the amount of music available to people. But, again, no one says this is the golden age of pop music. 

More importantly, with OpenAI’s recent announcement of Sora, which enables users to create films using text prompts, we’re likely to see something similar happen to the already crowded world of film and YouTube videos. 

If the hype is to be believed, GenAI generally will be somewhere between word processors and Gutenberg’s press in its importance on media. But, it would be a mistake to think that this will mean higher quality work in the future or that we will be empowering a new generation of creators by giving them an incredible toolkit. More likely, we will be burying those that would have been talented anyway with not-quite-as-good work.

Now, it’s obviously true that some form of gatekeeping could address this. Maybe some sort of Sotheby’s or National Trust will work to examine the provenance of creations and will build a repository of those they feel are truly good. But, more likely, many groups will do this, and these institutions, too, will get muddled. 

A more reasonable hope is that AI gives us filters that we can use to filter out the AI crap we don’t want. But, if Word is anything to go by, the immediate future belongs more to Mr Beast than Bach.

Thankfully, there is every reason to be optimistic about the market’s ability to sort quality over the long term. What Warren Buffet says about stocks - “In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine” - is likely to be true of other goods as well. In the meantime, however, I find myself browsing the history section more frequently.