What is your opinion on the theory that ease of printing was the cause of Europe's technological lead over other advanced ancient civilizations?
The Chinese, while being the first to invent printing, could not effectively utilize it because their writing system is logographic instead of phonetic. There are over 10,000 Chinese characters.
The Arabic script is a cursive script that connects letters together, resulting in a variety of intricate ligatures and letterforms. These complex typographical features made it challenging to create movable type with ...
The other obstacles to printing could theoretically be overcome. Merchants and missionaries would have transferred western printing technologies across the globe given enough time. Character sets poses a far more fundamental problem; it may be the deciding factor why other complex civilizations was so slow to adopt printing and industrialization.
Japan is one of the few successful examples of historical societies catching up to the west in technology. It too failed to adopt the printing press for a long time; a fact that was accompanied by stagnation. Japan... (read more)