1. Unknown To The Ancients: The New Technology
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UNKNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS: THE NEW TECHNOLOGY
New technology promises new riches to its pioneers. The development and commercial exploitation of television and computer technology in the twentieth century made fortunes for many just as the railroad and oil industries created a new wealthy social class in nineteenth-century America. In the fifteenth century a new invention promised to revolutionize communications and generate untold riches for those fortunate enough to be in it from the beginning.
In 1620, the influential English philosopher Francis Bacon observed how three inventions had reshaped the world as he knew it.
It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of inventions, and these are nowhere to be seen nowhere more conspicuously than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origins, though recent, are obscure and inglorious; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.
Bacon here identified the three inventions that changed the face of the known world. Gunpowder altered the course of warfare irreversibly. The magnet, when used to construct a mariner's compass, allowed navigation to proceed even when the sun and stars could not be seen. These two inventions lay behind England's rise to greatness under Queen Elizabeth I in the late sixteenth century as Bacon well knew.
Most important of all for the story that we are about to tell, the invention of printing made it possible for ideas to sweep across Europe and the oceans of the world, ignoring the barriers erected by anxious monarchs and bishops to safeguard the familiar and comfortable old ways. To understand the importance of this invention, we need to consider the social revolution that had engulfed Europe during the later Middle Ages. A new middle class emerged, convinced of the possibility of changing the world.