What scandalized the serious scholar Erasmus (as it fascinated Dürer) was the fact that, not much more than half a century after the first appearance of the printed book, demand had turned it into a product beyond the control of the scholars and specialists. The book had taken over as the transmitter of European written culture, before scholars and educators had had time to come to terms with its power and influence.

Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance