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How are New Tools Ignored, Adopted, Adapted, and/or Abused?
It’s all about the choices made for them and their use.
In the distant past, all art was one-of-a-kind. Even a reproduction of a work — text, art, or both — was a singular production.
For thousands of years, books, scrolls, maps, and other art were created solely by hand. This is part of what made certain works and educational opportunities available to only a select few. But that changed in 1436.
That was the year Gutenberg invented the printing press. In less than a hundred years, texts went from creation via painstaking, hand-written scribal work to mass production.
Still, individuals could only create printed work by hand. But then, in 1867, the typewriter was invented. Now individuals could write texts without having to use pen and ink.
Just over a hundred years later, the electronic word processor was invented. Now you could print the same thing multiple times — after typing it only once (without carbon paper or other messy options).
Twenty years later, word processing became software on personal computers. Which also added a new wrinkle to the art world with digital art. By the 1990s, the tools to create art digitally became widely available.
