The Printing Press and the Reconfiguration of Knowledge

Before Gutenberg, knowledge in Europe was scarce by design. Manuscripts were copied by hand in monasteries, and the Church controlled not only what was written but who could read it. The printing press did not simply make books cheaper — it dismantled an entire system of knowledge gatekeeping. Within decades of its arrival in the mid-fifteenth century, pamphlets, treatises, and translations flooded markets that had never before had access to the written word. The Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the rise of vernacular literatures are all, in part, stories about what happens when a technology breaks an existing monopoly on information.

The parallels to our current moment are striking, but they require careful handling. Like the printing press, AI promises to democratize access to knowledge — anyone can now generate text, translate documents, or query vast archives. But the printing press also reminds us that new technologies do not distribute power equally. In the Ottoman Empire, the Arabic-script printing press arrived centuries after Gutenberg, delayed not by technological incapacity but by political and religious debates about the authority of the written word. Sultan Ahmed III did not authorize Arabic-script printing until 1727, and even then, religious texts were excluded. The technology was available; the question was who would control it and for what purposes.

This is the critical lesson for thinking about AI. The technology itself is not the story. The story is about the institutions, economies, and power structures that determine how a technology is adopted, by whom, and on whose terms. Gutenberg did not create equality — he created new forms of inequality, new gatekeepers, and new struggles over who gets to speak.

When we encounter AI systems that promise to “democratize” knowledge, we should ask: democratize for whom? Under what conditions? And what new monopolies are being built in the process?