From the Renaissance to the Reformation, from the fall of feudalism to the rise of capitalism, from the Scientific Revolution to the Industrial Revolution, from the way we order our thoughts to what we choose to think about, nothing survived the printing revolution intact. Our world is the world that the printing press has created.

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TRANSCRIPT

In the beginning, there was the word. The spoken word, that is.

This word, the written word, didn't come along for countless generations.

And this word, the printed word, didn't come along for thousands of years after that.

In fact, we've only had the movable type printing press for about 600 years, but without it our world would be unrecognizable.

From the Renaissance to the Reformation, from the fall of feudalism to the rise of capitalism, from the Scientific Revolution to the Industrial Revolution, from the way we order our thoughts to what we choose to think about, nothing survived the printing revolution intact.

Our world is the world that the printing press has created.

And that world started with this. [Holds up mirror.]

VOICEOVER: Media. It surrounds us. We live our lives in it and through it. We structure our lives around it. But it wasn't always this way. So how did we get here? And where is the media technology that increasingly governs our lives taking us? This is the story of The Media Matrix.

PART ONE: THE GUTENBERG CONSPIRACY

You see, in the Middle Ages, mirrors—especially curved mirrors—were fiendishly difficult to make.

And pilgrim badges—elaborately designed lead or pewter plates with a curved mirror in the middle—were even more difficult to make. But in fifteenth-century Germany, they were in hot demand.