[malloryerik]

"The introduction of the printing press permitted the publication of pamphlets and books that overturned world governments and dethroned kings... but most people used it to trade porn and recipe books."

As Timothy Snyder notes when discussing the internet, the introduction of the printing press divided Western Christianity thereby causing a century and a half of religious wars in which a third of the population was killed. And later it gave us the Enlightenment and educated society.