In The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Elizabeth Eisenstein develops the idea that the shift from script to print resulted in a "communications or media revolution" and produced some of the most significant social and cultural consequences in Western civilization: the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the rise of modern science. However, cautioning against a leap to oversimplification, she also notes that, "the cultural metamorphosis produced by printing was really much more complicated than any single formula can possibly express. For one thing, engraved images became more, rather than less, abundant after the establishment of print shops throughout Western Europe. For another, Protestant propaganda exploited printed image no less than printed word—as numerous caricatures and cartoons may suggest" (36). In several fields, the shift to print culture "actually increased the functions performed by images while reducing those performed by words" (38).

Kress writes that "The combined effects on writing of the dominance of the mode of image and of the medium of the screen will produce deep changes in the forms and functions of writing" and "have profound effects on human, cognitive/affective, cultural and bodily engagement with the world, and on the forms and shapes of knowledge" (1).

Beginning with Eisenstein, drawing on Bolter and Kress, explore this notion of shifting modal dominance and its concomitant effects on literacy/literacies.

Leo's scintillating response to Essay #1