Chapter 3

1.  I think that the First American Print Media should get the most credit.  The problem with the Gutenberg, although impressive that he created it, was the time it took to get the prints out to the general public.  I think the idea of having 100,000 issues spread in the first 10 weeks is very impressive, and it spread literacy to the common people.  Even though the Civil War made paper expensive and the prints were cut down in circulation, the other wars really benefitted from widespread use of propaganda through print.
2. Literacy help shape what could be read-- people were no longer satisfied with just reading from the Bible.  Demands for entertainment through reading began, and people wanted to read fiction and romance and everything because it was now affordable to them.
3. I think it can be a good thing to read things online.  It sure can be a pain in the butt to show people what are you talking about at times, with all of the restrictions and locks.  I know that many of my friends post articles that they have read on facebook, leading me to read them.  I think with the internet comes the ability to skim more easily, to look for key words in searches so I imagine the more boring articles are ignored, which limits what a magazine can do.  Now everything is expected to be online and sometimes more interactive.
4.  They affect it by their ads and censoring what is being printed.  This can be a good thing because with more money comes the ability to do better ads and make more money and get a voice out there, but it can be bad because it can hide certain truths that would have been left alone had a big company not gotten in the way of publishing.
5. I would hope that books are not obsolete.  Books are easier on the eyes to read, and great before you go to bed-- it is hard to sleep after staring at a bright screen for hours.  Books are cheaper in the short run.  books allow you to reference by page memory, whereas it is harder to gage where you are after scrolling down a long page.  Books are easier to hold and carry around too.  I should hope that a book will always stay around, because I will always buy them as long as they are around.