From Woodblocks to the Internet

Book excerpt: The thirteen essays in this volume narrate and analyze the reciprocal influences of technological, intellectual, and sociopolitical changes on the structure of modern China's book (and print) trade; more specifically, they treat the rise of new genres of print, changes in writing practices, the dissemination of ideas and texts (both paper and electronic), the organization of knowledge, and the relationship between the state and print culture. The essays range chronologically from the late eighteenth century to the present, an over two-century transition period that allows authors to draw comparisons between the largely woodblock print culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the mechanized publishing of the late-nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries; and the global internet culture of today.