Source: Persuasion
by Emily Chamlee-Wright
“A single printing press could produce in a day what it would otherwise take a team of skilled scribes weeks, if not months, to produce. Ideas collided with other ideas, eventually sparking the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and all the intellectual and material progress that followed. Today, we call breakthrough innovations like this Gutenberg moments — moments in which a new technology changes everything, creating ripple effects of disruption across society. Centuries later, artificial intelligence is driving our own Gutenberg moment, promising to drive transformational progress in biomedical sciences, space exploration, and alternative energies. Yet, if we’re to understand our own times, it’s important to recognize that the Gutenberg story isn’t just about soaring progress. It’s a story about how, at so many points along the way, that progress almost didn’t happen.” (05/30/25)