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| A book printed by the Gutenberg printing press |
The printing press is easily one of the most influential inventions of the renaissance, if not of all time. It allowed for works to be copied quickly and distributed to people so that for the first time, regular people had access to information that was typically only shared with religious leadership or the socially elite. The printing press allowed for new ideas to be spread quickly, and it leveled the playing field by giving access to printed materials to everyone. Fast forward to today, thanks to the printing press, the internet, smart phones and a plethora of other inventions, we quite literally have huge libraries of information at our fingertips. If someone wants to know something now, they don't even have to type it out, they just ask Siri or Alexa.
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| The line outside the Supreme story in New York City |
Over the summer I took a class on persuasion. In that class we discussed several different techniques to persuade people to buy things, see our opinions or just straight up convince them of something. We discussed the principle of scarcity in terms of purchasing. The principle of scarcity goes something like this: The less there is of something, the more people want it. The brand Supreme, is successful because they only make a certain amount of clothing items when they release a new collection. People wait in line for hours before the store opens just to get in their to purchase an overpriced t-shirt, that no one else will have. It's madness and total brilliance.
If value is increased by how inaccessible something is, that must mean value decreases as accessibility goes up. After the printing press, information became accessible, and it has only gotten increasingly more accessible with the inventions mentioned previously in the last 30 years or so. Information is everywhere. There were men and women who died in order for us to have access to certain information. So here's my question, if we want something to be highly valued, is the best way to do it making it scarce? To take this further, do you feel that some things are less valuable because they are so easy to get to and if so how can we reverse that to see their importance and value?
image credit: Book https://www.dkfindout.com/uk/more-find-out/special-events/how-is-book-made/
image credit: Supreme NY store lineup h
ttps://www.highsnobiety.com/2015/08/20/supreme-fall-winter-2015-new-york-line-up/
For me, the idea of scarcity doesn't apply to knowledge. The value of knowledge is inherent. What is lost when knowledge is more available is the praise of society one receives for acquiring it. That makes accessible knowledge worth it to me. I believe that if everyone took advantage of the expanse of knowledge available to us today, it would encourage the search for increased knowledge and raise society.
ReplyDeleteThis was my exact thought. To make an argument you have to define what "value" is. If we base it on the fact that every person runs on a specific value structure that helps them decided their every action and they valued truth, then I would say that it is more difficult. Assuming valuable knowledge is truth, and assuming there is only one singular truth (not multiple interpretations of truth), then it is harder to obtain because there are an infinite number of false assumptions but there is only one truth. Increased availability of information tends to open the potential for more interpretations of the truth than we are willing to sift through.
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