Title: Conversational Leadership Café: Is this our Gutenberg Moment?
Date: Tuesday 31st May 2022
Time: 17:00 to 19:00 London time (Time in your timezone)
Host/Speaker: David Gurteen
Location: Online Zoom Event
Price: Free
Registration: Please register on Eventbrite
Introduction
This event is one in a series of online Knowledge Cafés on Conversational Leadership run on the Zoom video conferencing platform.
Each Café is themed on material from my online blook on Conversational Leadership.
Before each Café, I may ask you to do a little homework and read one or more posts in my blook relating to the theme.
If you are not familiar with the Knowledge Café concept, this event is participatory. It is NOT a webinar.
I will speak about the following theme of this Café and pose a question to trigger the conversation. We will then divide into break-out rooms for three rounds of small group conversations followed by a whole group conversation.
Theme: Is this our Gutenberg Moment?
The Gutenberg Revolution
In the history of knowledge, the refinement of the printing press in Germany by Gutenberg in 1436 had a massive impact on the world.
Not only did it help lead to the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment but also the Protestant Reformation which undermined the power of the Catholic Church and in turn, led to the Thirty Years’ War, considered one of the most destructive wars in European history — thought to have claimed between 4 and 12 million lives — maybe 20% of Europe’s population — most from disease and famine.
With the invention of social media, are we going through a Second Gutenberg Revolution? For better or for worse, is this Our Gutenberg Moment?
The Enlightenment
Several influences triggered the Enlightenment, but two of the more significant were:
- The invention of Gutenberg’s printing press and the greater availability and reduced cost of books
- The coffeehouses of London and the salons of Paris and Europe.
Books facilitated the dissemination of ideas and knowledge, while coffeehouses and salons were places of conversation that created new ideas and knowledge.
Today, a parallel revolution is taking place that may trigger a second Enlightenment.
- The invention of the web has accelerated the sharing of ideas and knowledge on a massive scale.
- Social media has allowed “textual conversations” to take place, and in particular, conversational technologies like Zoom, Teams, and Clubhouse have enabled global audio and video conversations.
Reading Material
Please read this post in my blook on the subject if you have the time, as it will help set the context for the conversation. It is not a pre-requisite.
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