The Gutenberg Galaxy in a Bracket Not Closed

McLuhan thought that the Gutenberg Galaxy is over, but it will be McLuhan’s rear-view mirror which will take it to the digital age. Online near future is accompanied by bookshelves, and not the audiovisual space of Moholy-Nagy or Marshall McLuhan. Book typography is able to live on almost unchanged in the electronic space, just as design and structure of codices were not changed by Gutenberg: he changed the technology, not the content. Today’s major question is: who is going to be the new Aldus, who is able to give a new form to ebooks. I compare acoustic reading of the blind with the sighted, I present the typographical world of rear-view mirrors from e-books to iBooks, I compare typographical possibilities of Barthes’ commentators with today’s comment-writers, and I present innovative ways of the use of typography from Gutenberg to Bauhaus to Kitchen Budapest.