# Printing Created a Growing Ecosystem of Knowledge by John Tooby > “Printing summoned into existence increasingly diversified bodies of new knowledge, multiplied productive divisions of labor, midwifed new professions, and greatly expanded the middle class. It threw up voluntary, meritocratic new hierarchies of knowledge and productivity to rival traditional hierarchies of force and superstition. In short, the release of printing technology into human societies brought into being a vast new ecosystem of knowledge — dense, diverse, rapidly changing, rapidly growing, and beyond the ability of any one mind to encompass, or any government to control.” > **— John Tooby**, *2010 Edge Annual Question, response passage* ## Sources and Context - **Direct publication and locator:** [I SEEM TO BE METADATA — John Tooby](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11818) — 2010 Annual Question response, the full representative extract. - **Exact original excerpt:** “Printing summoned into existence increasingly diversified bodies of new knowledge, multiplied productive divisions of labor, midwifed new professions, and greatly expanded the middle class. It threw up voluntary, meritocratic new hierarchies of knowledge and productivity to rival traditional hierarchies of force and superstition. In short, the release of printing technology into human societies brought into being a vast new ecosystem of knowledge — dense, diverse, rapidly changing, rapidly growing, and beyond the ability of any one mind to encompass, or any government to control.” - **Context and editing:** Tooby describes printing’s historical effects while comparing knowledge ecologies across media in the larger essay. The three contiguous sentences preserve the historical subject. The poster is the complete archived sentence or passage. - **Local Edge archive:** [[research/Edge 2010 Full Quotation Curation|Edge 2010 Full Quotation Curation]], response EDGE2010-021. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] - **Article:** [[articles/Information Persistence in Complex Systems|Information Persistence in Complex Systems]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Greatest Transformation in Human History|The Greatest Transformation in Human History]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Knowledge Commons|Knowledge Commons]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Knowledge Commons|Knowledge Commons]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Printing summoned into existence increasingly diversified bodies of new knowledge, multiplied productive divisions of labor, midwifed new professions, and greatly expanded the middle class. It threw up voluntary, meritocratic new hierarchies of knowledge and productivity to rival traditional hierarchies of force and superstition. In short, the release of printing technology into human societies brought into being a vast new ecosystem of knowledge — dense, diverse, rapidly changing, rapidly growing, and beyond the ability of any one mind to encompass, or any government to control.” — John Tooby, 2010 Edge Annual Question, response passage https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-john-tooby-printing-created-growing-ecosystem-knowledge ```