One of the popular geeky topics over the past decade has been to compare the Internet to the printing press. The printing press brought about a massive cultural revolution affecting all aspects of life, such as government, religion, and literature.

It took a long time for this change to take effect and this month we celebrated the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, the second most published book in the world, which Janet Murray traces to the invention of the printing press and hails as the beginning of the European novel in her book Hamlet on the Holodeck.

The birth of the printing press brought about wider distribution of bible, the most published book, which many say brought about a disintermediation of priests and the reformation.

Politically, it is interesting to look at the American and French revolutions and the role that the printing press played there. It is common to hear people compare the political bloggers of today with the pamphleteers of revolutionary France and America. It is this comparison that I would like to explore a little.

My daughter is off in college studying revolutionary Europe. A while ago we discussed the parallels between revolutionary Europe and present day America. As we talk about bloggers, it is common to talk about the ‘A list’ bloggers, those bloggers because they were early adopters, great writers, of for whatever other reason get the most attention and readers. My daughter and I pondered together if there were the great ‘A list’ pamphleteers, whose work survive, and then thousands of ‘B list’ (or C or D …. ) that have been forgotten. Is there an archive, perhaps at some French university, where one could read some of the pamphlets of the lesser known pamphleteers? How would they compare to all of the lesser known bloggers of today? It seems as if there is a great research paper waiting to be written there.

Beyond that, what other parallels are there between revolutionary Europe and modern day America? The Encyclopedia comes to mind and I pondered the parallel between the Encyclopedia and Wikipedia. My daughter pointed out that the Encyclopedia was edited by the A list pamphleteers of the day, and so it seems as if dkospedia might be a closer parallel.

Beyond that we went on to talk about other parallels less closely related to changing technology. How are the tax benefits which are much more beneficial to the rich than to the masses of the Bush administration like some of the tax policies which lead up to the French Revolution? What about the war debt of France at the time and the growing U.S. debt? Are their parallels between the limited resources of food leading up to the French Revolution and energy shortages of the present day?

I discussed this with a friend when I was down in DC last weekend. He suggested that the parallels break down at about this point. As long as large numbers of people are not starving, political systems are unlikely to change. Perhaps. Yet the phrase that gets remembered is not “Give me bread, or give me death.”

So where does this leave us? What will the internet do to our political processes? I don’t think I have much more of an idea than anyone else. However, it will be interesting to watch and participate in whatever happens.