Back in the day, print was the original disruptive technology—and after the original publication of Disrupting the Future in 2010, print was again involved in disruption.

On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse sent the very first telegraph message, “What hath God wrought?” and the telegraph was the first in a long succession of disruptive communications technologies that culminated in—but will in no way end with—the Internet of today. “What hath God wrought?” could just as easily have been the first message sent by telephone (rather than “Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!”), the first radio transmission (a live performance of Puccini’s opera Tosca), the first television broadcast (a picture of the Maltese Cross, broadcast by John Logie Baird in 1924—not exactly “must-see TV”), the first email message (“lo”)...the list goes on, and will likely never end. The phrase could also aptly serve as the first printed words.

Today, we are beset by disruptive technologies—in 2010 it was the Internet, social media, ebooks, mobile technologies, etc., and today it is largely anything and everything to do with AI. But print was the original disruptive communications technology. Even a book about the importance of scribes who reproduced text by hand had to be printed.