Mill Talk: A Paper Nation: America’s First Information Revolution
Presented by Alex Wright, author of Empire of Ink: The Printers, Rogues, and Radicals Who Invented the American Newspaper
FREE to the Pubic
REGISTRATION REQUIRED
No society had ever generated so much ink and paper in so little time. Between the Revolutionary War and the dawn of the twentieth century, the number of American newspapers increased five hundredfold. In his new book Empire of Ink, author Alex Wright tells the story of how an unruly young democracy found its voice, shaped by the interplay of new technologies, bold public policies, and a distinctly American zeal for free expression.
It was a wild, boisterous time, populated by gunslinging editors, tramp printers, zealous reformers, brilliant inventors, and literal snake-oil salesmen. Together, they transformed journalism, built a new industry, and helped forge the nation’s character. By century's end, this freewheeling press had begun to give way to news syndicates, wire services, and corporate interests. Wealthy media barons seized on new technologies and economies of scale to consolidate power—spawning the mass media that would come to define the twentieth century.
In this illustrated talk, Wright brings this pivotal chapter in American history to life and explores how the struggles over truth, technology, and power that shaped the nation’s first information revolution continue to echo into our own digital age.
Bio:
Alex Wright is a writer, designer, and researcher whose work explores the history of the information age. His latest book Empire of Ink: The Printers, Rogues, and Radicals Who Invented the American Newspaper was published by Basic Books in 2026. His previous books include Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages (first published in 2007 and reissued as Informatica by Cornell University Press in 2022). He has also written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review, The Christian Science Monitor, and Harvard Magazine, among others.
Alex has also led digital project initiatives at companies including The New York Times, Google News, and Hearst Newspapers. From 2008-2019 he was a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts’ MFA program in Interaction Design. He divides his time between Brooklyn, New York, and the Hudson Valley.
Links:
alexwright.com/
https://www.facebook.com/alex.wright.9277583/
https://bsky.app/profile/alexwright.com
Mill Talks at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation are free and open to the public and are made possible by the generous support of the Lowell Institute.
