The concept of a ‘Gutenberg Parenthesis’ is a reformulation and an update of the thesis that the technological advances now bringing to an end the age of print are nonetheless restoring significant features of the media systems obtaining prior to its inception. This article
specifies what is entailed in this new variant of the restoration topos in deep media history, not least in relation to established formulations (McLuhan, Ong, Foley). The comparison also encompasses the ‘ecological’ perspective of how developments in media technology are related
to the analogously parenthetical trajectory of change that can be perceived in ways of thinking, for which a new formulation is also offered.
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