The Founder

My name is Kenan Capik.

I am a sociologist. An educator. A translator.

For twenty years, I have worked at the intersection of language, knowledge, and the movement of ideas — across Turkey, Malaysia, Canada, and the United States. Across more than thirty countries.

My work has always asked the same question:

How does meaning survive?

While translating texts on the history of scholarship — while writing a screenplay about the journey of ideas from the Islamic world into early European print culture — I kept returning to one moment.

The moment words first became permanent.

When they were pressed into paper. By hand.

I went to see it for myself.

At the International Printing Museum in Carson, California, I watched a Gutenberg press in operation. Type was set by hand. Ink was applied. The press was pulled.

And something became clear:

A printed page is not just a record of thought.

It is thought, made physical.

Carta Prima began there.

Kenan Capik is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at Middle East Technical University. He is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute (UK) and has served in senior leadership roles across international education institutions operating in more than thirty countries.