Cui Bono?

How unexpected consequences shape our lives

Some technologies are simply improvements on earlier efforts. For example, an electric oven is merely a better option than a wood-fired stove. But some technologies radically reshape everything in ways we rarely comprehend.

One example is the printing press. It enabled Martin Luther’s Reformation; within five years of him publishing his 95 Theses over 300,000 copies had been printed. This was hundreds of times more copies than all the hand-copied manuscripts earnest monks had produced between 400 CE and 1425 CE. The collapse of the Roman Catholic Church led to religious fragmentation in Northern Europe which permitted The Enlightenment and our modern industrial scientific world.

Because money could be made from printing we invented concepts like copyright and intellectual property, which hundreds of years later would result in a massive innovation boom.

But more than that: as people began to read they began to suffer from myopia, which led to the development of improved lenses, which led to microscopes and telescopes (initially built to spot the flags of ships out on the horizon and permit a quick profit in the local market) that ultimately were turned skyward and overturned the Copernican doctrine of the Catholic Church, which in turn further accelerated The Enlightenment and hence eventually resulted in…