You can't have an industrial revolution, you can't have democracies, you can't have populations who can govern themselves until you have literacy. The printing press simply unlocked literacy.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The printing press did something really big for the world when everyone could get books in their hands and read.
Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship.
Education must be the only sector that hasn't already been completely revolutionized by technology.
The Industrial Revolution has two phases: one material, the other social; one concerning the making of things, the other concerning the making of men.
Technological 'revolutions' don't really overthrow anything - they simply append a new and dynamic market to that which went before.
We begin to change the world when we stimulate long-term prosperity using technology. There is not a problem that's large enough that innovation and entrepreneurship can't solve.
During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.
The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.
Technology determines the possibilities of society. It doesn't matter whether you start out from a fascist state or a communist state or a free-market state.
Would the Protestant Reformation have happened without the printing press? Would the American Revolution have happened without pamphlets? Probably not. But neither printing presses nor pamphlets were the heroes of reform and revolution.