It’s all happening at the zoo: Dr. David Starkey’s keynote
Dr. David Starkey is not troubled by such conventional wisdom as Christopher Columbus embarking for the new world from Barcelona – “Ideas are much more important than facts.” And the idea he promoted this evening is that the greatest impact from Columbus’ time, on worlds both new and old, was the invention of the printing press: “For the first time, culture became a mass product.”
The power of the press, at the turn of the 15th century, was the multiplication, fixing and preserving of knowledge. Today we are once again on the threshold of breakthroughs in the universal transmission of knowledge – remember Geldof’s comment that the US$150 million raised by LiveAid built schools that have taught 37 million African children? Which is why Dr. Starkey, referencing information technology, concluded by throwing down his own gauntlet: “It’s in your hands whether we see the end of a renaissance or the beginning of a new one.”
