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Imagine a technology that, from its inception, threatens to throw intellectual society into chaos, a technology that radically democratizes both production and consumption of media while creating countless new forms of expression. Now imagine that while some of the new material produced is of lasting value, most is evanescent at best, and that the resulting flood of material weakens traditional institutions, eroding their special place in society by making the functions they provide seem irrelevant to young people.

Imagine, in other words, that this technology creates a stark choice between preserving the current state of society vs. embracing the new, even given the destruction of of traditional values and institutions. Which side would you be on?

I don't have to ask, because if you are reading a Penguin blog, you have already identified yourself as one of the revolutionaries, an embracer of the most intellectually radical technology the world has ever seen: the printing press.

It is impossible to be pro-book and anti-revolution -- the printed word is revolution incarnate, responsible for a greater alteration of the intellectual landscape than anything since the alphabet itself. Movable type so thoroughly remade European culture that the 17th century has more in common with the 21st century than it did with the 15th.

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Penguin Group (USA) Has Nine Finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards; Viking Alone Garners Six Finalists

Penguin Group (USA) has nine finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards for 2007. Six of these titles are from Viking, which garnered more finalists than any other imprint in the industry. The nominated authors and their books are as follows:

• Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (Viking) - Biography
• Ronald Brownstein, The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America (The Penguin Press) - Current Interest
• Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books) - Fiction
• Stewart O'Nan, Last Night at the Lobster (Viking) - Fiction
• Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead Books) - Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
• Åke Edwardson, Frozen Tracks: An Inspector Erik Winter Novel (Viking) - Mystery/Thriller
• Tana French, In the Woods (Viking) - Mystery/Thriller
• Christine Kenneally, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language (Viking) - Science & Technology
• Gino Segrè, Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics (Viking) - Science & Technology

The winners will be announced on Friday, April 25th, at UCLA, as part of the Los Angeles Times Book Festival.