Bi Sheng Quotes

Before Gutenberg The Dec. 12 Book World review of the novel “Gutenberg’s Apprentice” [“Capturing a long-past transformative movement,” Style] said that Johannes Gutenberg “is often imagined as a lone Renaissance genius who singlehandedly invented the technology of movable type.” Indeed, that Eurocentric view ignores well-documented Asian history. Bi Sheng invented movable type (first wooden, then ceramic) about 1040 in China. Movable metal type was developed in Korea , where the oldest book printed with metal type was published in 1377. Gutenberg was the first person in Europe to use movable metal type in the 1450s. Daniel Dzurek, Washington

For one thing, Gutenberg didn’t invent movable type—a Chinese artisan named Bi Sheng did, using clay and ash, three and a half centuries before Gutenberg was born. For another, information wants to be free, but so does misinformation. The printing press empowered such religious progressives as Erasmus and John Calvin; it also empowered hucksters, war profiteers, terrorists, and bigots.* Nor did the printing press eliminate the problem of gatekeepers. It merely shifted the problem