1.1. 500 years later
The printing press was the information superhighway of the early modern era. It allowed Enlightenment ideas and scientific discoveries to spread throughout society.
However, power can only be exercised in coherence with the collective knowledge level of society. When the gap becomes too great, the collective illusion that legitimizes power crumbles.
As a result, after three centuries of new ideas spread through the printing press, the situation of monarchies became untenable. Science challenged religion, merchants were richer than nobles, philosophers reinvented the social contract...
Society then sought a new way of exercising power, adapted to its worldview. In France, the bourgeoisie overthrew the monarchy... Only to crown an emperor a few years later. Elsewhere in Europe, enlightened despotism or constitutional monarchy was tried. It took several decades for a new stability to emerge in the form of our current "democratic" republics.
Thus, the technological revolution of the printing press served as a support for such a transformation of society that it eventually led to a political revolution.
In its wake, the industrial revolution transformed the economic model of society. States gradually abandoned the economic sphere to make way for industrial and financial groups, even to the point of relinquishing their historical prerogative of issuing currency.
Finally, as the dimension of the planet shrank with the progress of transport and information technology, these private organizations took on a global dimension and became full-fledged actors of power, joining international organizations to form an increasingly undemocratic decision-making elite.
It is in this context that the internet arrives, 500 years after the printing press. Just like its ancestor, the internet profoundly transforms the way we exchange ideas. This new information superhighway transforms our way of thinking and communicating our ideas. A new collective consciousness emerges.
And just like the printing press in its time, the internet makes obsolete the institutions and powers in place. A new model of society needs to be found. A new cycle begins.
References The printing press as an agent of change