麻省理工学院“开放式课程网页” | 历史学 | 21H.418 2002秋季课程：西元1450年到2000年的印刷科技

近年来，在本校内和在其他地方都有不少关于纸本书死亡的论述。一些评论家认为，数位化与各式电子媒介，使得印刷文本像用鹅毛笔书写一样过时。在这项课程里，我们将审视书的终结是对是错，并用评论家们缺乏的历史脉络补充论据：我们回顾欧洲历史的早期近代（西元1450~1800）的书与印刷技术。我们从瓦尔特?昂格和伊丽莎白?艾森斯坦的理论和历史概要开始探讨，其后，也会研究一些像伊拉斯谟斯与卢梭这些书写阅读的特例。最后，我们将以历史层面反思今日数位化科技所挑起的一些争论。

这项课程以两个课号21H.418 和CMS.880并列，目的在于提供想要主修或选修比较媒体与历史系的同学，并且开放给比较媒介课程的研究生和其它麻省理工学院、哈佛硕博士班学生。

There has been much discussion in recent years, on this campus and elsewhere, about the death of the book. Digitization and various forms of electronic media, some critics say, are rendering the printed text as obsolete as the writing quill. In this subject we will examine the claims for and against the demise of the book, but we also supplement these arguments with an historical perspective they lack: we examine books and printing technology during the Early Modern period of European history, from roughly 1450 to 1800. We will begin with the theoretical and historical overviews of Walter Ong and Elizabeth Eisenstein, after which we will study specific cases such as the writings and readers of Erasmus and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, English chapbooks, and stage plays in print. Finally, we will reconsider the issues raised by digital technologies today in light of these historical perspectives.

This subject is jointly listed as 21H.418 and CMS.880. It satisfies requirements towards the Major and the Minor in History and in Comparative Media Studies, and is also open to graduate students in the Comparative Media Studies Program and in other MIT and Harvard graduate programs.