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 necessary level of precision required for printing. The first printing press in the Ottoman Empire was not established until 1727, almost three centuries after Gutenberg's invention.
It would be a grave historical irony, if the reason why the Enlightenment occurred in Europe and not East Asia is because of a random cultural artifact - the Chinese never adopted a phonetic alphabet. Such an arbitrary twist of fate could have fundamentally altered the course of human history.
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's adoption of advanced printing technologies more suitable to oriental characters coincided with its meteoric economic rise during the Meiji restoration.
Most regions of the world at the time were not sufficiently advanced to take full advantage of the education opportunities provided by printing.
The printing press factor doesn't address why some regions of the world developed complex civilizations while other regions didn't. But it could perhaps explain why one specific civilization (Europe) advanced so much faster after the advent of printing, while other complex civilizations (who were arguably ahead of Europe at the time) stagnated.