We hear a lot these days about disruption. Apple alone has disrupted the music industry with the iPod, the telecommunications industry with the iPhone and the entire PC industry with it's introduction of the iPad in 2010. Amazon continues to be a huge disruption to Publishing and hopes to disrupt all of retail in it's quest to become the everything store. But disruption is not new.
Perhaps the greatest disruption of all was the introduction of the printing press in 1436. Suddenly knowledge could be owned and shared among the masses. Instead of books created meticulously by Monks cloistered in monasteries across Europe, the printing press with it's movable type, enabled books to be printed, bound and shipped in large quantities. This was the end of the dark ages,the birth of the Renaissance and modern publishing.
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