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owl [soylentnews.org] writes:

“What Hath Xerox Wrought” asked a 1976 Time Magazine headline, the proceeding article prompted readers to imagine if: “some inventive and omnipotent god offered the nation a device that would greatly advance the spread of information.”

There was a catch though: the promethean powers afforded by this “green-eyed deus ex machina” would also bring chaos: “In return, the deity required that the President resign, that stacks of sensitive Government and corporate secrets be made public.”

The writer was of course referring to the Watergate scandal and Daniel Ellsberg’s use of photocopiers to leak the Pentagon Papers to the press. The hypothetical was actually a reality. While the USSR kept strict control over the technology, highly regulating the machines until 1989, the free world was left to deal with the ‘consequences’ of freedom.

Downsides of this supposed double edge sword - cited in Time - would be encouraging waste and slothfulness, on top of stifling creativity and punching holes in copyright laws. This last issue was of particular concern to publishers and authors, one that had been growing for more than a decade because, as Malcolm McLaren would put it in 1993, “Gutenberg made everyone a reader, Xerox made everyone a publisher…”

Original Submission