A person or a show that had an influence on the mass media Essay

A person or a show that had an influence on the mass media - Essay Example Other types of print media include magazines, journals and books. Through evolution, a wide range of newspapers is available for people to choose from in the market. Traditionally, different kinds of newspapers include the tabloids and the broadsheets, each covering different kinds of news. The broadsheet however is the most intellectual of and most informative of the two, as it focuses of the real issues. Contrary to this, the tabloid majors on gossips, entertainment and celebrity as well as sports news. Even as people enjoy their daily reading from their favourite newspapers, may it be news, politics or advertisements, they are little knowledgeable of the evolutionary process that the newspapers have gone through. Some think that they just appeared, while others remain clueless. However, newspapers have an interesting history of their origin and evolution. In this paper, I trace the origin of the brilliant brain behind one of the worlds’ leading forms of mass media communica tion, Johannes Gutenberg. Historical arguments point out that the earliest form of a printed book known as the â€Å"Diamond Sutra† was printed in China in 868 CE. Some historians however argue that this book was printed earlier than this. The truth is not verifiable. However, the man behind this great invention was Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith and a businessman from the mining town of Mainz in southern Germany. Research reveals that Johannes Gutenberg  borrowed money, which he invested in his invention. Luckily, his success drastically changed the world of printing. His earliest form of printing machine, the printing press, was made of replaceable or movable letters that were either wooden or metallic. According to Childress (2008), after a long struggle of trial and error, Gutenberg  completed the machine in 1440. There is an amusing story about how the idea occurred to Johannes. One day, as Johannes sat by the window reading a book chained to the reading table, he c ould not help from smiling at the wonderful ideas that the book contained. Outside, rain was pouring heavily, banging on the window. Suddenly, he felt angered by the precious nature of books then. Disgustingly, he shook his head, and vowed to look for a way that would reduce the value of books and enable people handle them in a different way. This incidence was the beginning of a research that led to the birth of the printing press, subsequently marking the start of mass reproduction of books. However, what benefited the most from this invention was the mass production of newspapers as a form of mass communication. Hundreds of years ago, the only means in which people could write books was by way of handwriting. There was no form of printing or publishing presses available for interested parties to exploit. Due to the rareness of the books, it prompted their chaining to the reading tables as a measure to prevent people from taking them away. Estimated cost of a book then was the cos t of a town house (Childress, 2008). Johannes was born in the year 1398 in Mainz Germany, but later moved to Strasbourg in 1428, escaping the rivalry that existed between the rich and the townspeople. He came from a very rich and powerful family as his father was a jeweller and a goldsmith working at the Mainz Mint. Starting his life as a goldsmith himself, Johannes learnt tips that would latter help him in his invention. Although he fell in love and went ahead to propose to Ennelin zu der Iserin Thure, he changed his mind along the way and broke

Is God a Man or a Woman Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Is God a Man or a Woman - Essay Example The Upanishadic texts (like some of the earlier Vedic texts) are primarily concerned with acquiring knowledge of the "soul", "spirit" and "god". The Upanishadic concept of God was abstract and philosophical. Different Upanishadic texts postulated the doctrine of an Universal Soul that embraced all physical beings. All life emanated from this universal soul and death simply caused individual manifestations of the soul to merge or mingle back with the universal soul.. The Hindu philosophy of the Atman and Paramatman finds its basis from this scientific concept. As a corollary to this theory emerged the notion that even as individual beings might refer to this universal soul - i.e. God in varied ways - by using different names and different methods of worship - all living beings were nevertheless related to each other and to the universal God, and capable of merging with the universal god. Such an approach was not incompatible with secular society, and permitted different faiths and sub-faiths to coexist in relative peace and harmony. In the course of defining their philosophy, the scholars of the Upanishad period raised several questions that challenged mechanical theism (as was also done in some hymns from the Rig Veda and Atharva Veda). If God existed as the unique creator of the world, they wondered who created this unique creator. The logical pursuit of such a line of questioning could either lead to an infinite series of creators, or to the rejection or abandonment of this line of questioning. The common theist solution to this philosophical dilemma was to simply reject logic and demand unquestioning faith on the part of the believer. A few theists attempted to use this contradiction to their own advantage by positing that god existed precisely because "He" was indescribable by mere mortals. But, by and large, this contradiction was taken very seriously by the philosophers of the Upanishadic period. The Upanishadic philosophers attempted to resolve this contradiction by defining God as an entity that extend ed infinitely in all dimensions covering both space and time. This was a philosophical advance in that it attempted to come to terms with at least the most obvious challenges to the notion of god as a human-like creator and did not require the complete rejection of logic. In the very process of their questioning, (and albeit speculative reasoning about god), they had opened the door for rationalists and even outright atheists who took their tentative questioning about the role and the character of God as "creator" to conclusions that rejected theism entirely. But in either case, many rationalist and/or naturalist philosophical streams emerged from this initial foundation. Some were nominally theistic (but in the abstract Upanishadic vein), others were agnostic (as the early Jains), while the early Buddhists and the Lokayatas were atheists. Buddhism, on the other hand is basically a religion of the mind, of the present moment awareness, of leading a virtuous and responsible life, and of the individual who is in search of an answer to the problems of change, impermanence and suffering within the confines of his own experience as a practitioner of the Eightfold path. The tenets of Buddhism are not centered around the concept of an universal supreme being, who in other religions, is responsible for