Did it lead to the decline of the Ottoman Empire? China had the printing press for centuries before anyone else and on a per capita basis was not substantially better off or more powerful. Europe did overtake the Ottomans after they adopted the printing press, but a lot of other stuff happened as well and it was only centuries after the adoption that Europe began to match the Ottomans.
Obviously in western culture that evolved subsequent to the printing press easy publishing has become critical to how we live our modern lives and it's easy to draw a line connecting those dots, but it does not necessarily follow that the printing press either triggers or is a prerequisite for industrialization.
Even if the printing press was a major contributor to Europe's rise, that's not quite the same thing as the Ottoman's decline. Europe was eventually in a position to deal a deathblow but the Ottoman Empire had a lot of issues for a long time prior to its end (which coincided with several European empires as well). Perhaps the printing press could have helped some of these issues, but it's not at all clear it would have done more good than harm.
It was a part of all the reasons the empire started to collapse. The main reason wasn't that printing press was banned, but the mentality behind the ban.
They failed to adapt. They failed to recognize what made previous sultans so successful. Instead of innovating, they decided it would be better to keep the status quo. When they realized the need to modernize, it was already too late. They had already become the sick man of Europe.
The Chinese written language isn't as conductive to use with a printing press as compared to Latin or Arabic scripts which is why it didn't make as much of an impact there.
What went wrong? During the middle ages the Arabs developed a brilliant civilization, or so we are told. Next, at some time during the fifteenth century, things began going wrong. The Arabs missed the invention of print (only in 1775 did the Ottomans, who at that time ruled over most Arabs, allow the first printing shop to be established. They missed humanism, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. They missed the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. They missed the French and American Revolutions along with the principles of democracy and human rights; and they also missed the industrial revolution.
http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/monsters-ii/
The printing press was banned as a cynical ploy by Ottoman rulers to suppress the Arab peoples. They knew this would reduce innovation, which Arabs were adept at - maybe even reduce Arab innovation for centuries - but hey, you can’t make an omelette without cracking some eggs right?
Ottomans wrote the whole playbook for Middle Eastern dictators: systematically favor the ethnoreligious groups you like, ensure that any big business opportunities are channeled through them, and then for disfavored ethnoreligious groups, suppress avenues to wealth which can be used against their rulers. Then, with the massive vacuum of intelligence left behind as a result of this policy, let fundamentalists misuse religion in such a way to keep your opponents simple and stupid (whereas during the Islamic Golden Age, scientists were inspired by Islam to make groundbreaking discoveries, and they in turn helped spark the Enlightenment in Europe).
The golden age of Muslim civilization had ended over 200 years earlier due to Mongol invasions and their aftermath. After that they stagnated while Europe started to rapidly advance 150 years later.
Read up on the Mongol invasions, and particularly their conquest of Baghdad (the capital of the then ruling Abassid Khilafat). They slaughtered scholars en masses, and dumped so many books into the Tigris that it's said that the river turned black (from ink), not red.
Baghdad is smaller today than it was then. Just to show how much of an impact was felt.
Reminds me of how cars first appeared in England, they had to deal with kneejerk regulatory capture by the Railroads that set the car industry back decades.
One of the most significant examples of regulatory capture was the Locomotive Act of 1865. This law required all self-propelled vehicles on public roads to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag to warn pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles. This measure was designed to make driving cars more difficult and less appealing, ultimately protecting the railroad industry's monopoly on transportation.
Is there actually any proof? Just because an event happened that doesn't prove it caused the decline of an entire empire. There is as much proof here as the decline in internet explorer usage leading to the decline in the murder rate.
Assuming this is absolutely true and comparisons to AI and regulation are well-reasoned, I still do not have much evidence American politicians are interested in crafting laws based on long-term tradeoffs and well-reasoned positions.
I hope it guides UAE policy and the policies of functional political systems, but I'm not holding my breath thinking American political discourse will take this topic seriously at all.
"If you believe AI should be open, then you support terrorism and child sex trafficking" is the only outcome I anticipate.
True, their goal was to keep their current ruling class firmly entrenched in their positions of power so banning the printing press makes sense. Probably a few take aways there for current events.
Yes, but the Chalcedonian schism and the East-West schism were between churches who viewed themselves ostensibly as equals, or at least on a relatively equal footing — bishops leading one church against bishops leading another. The Protestant Reformation was more like a revolution: people fed up with the Church for whatever reason rebelling against it. There were antecedents, like the Lollards who had many of the same complaints the Protestants had, but their movements never stuck or spread in the same way that Protestantism did. That, I believe, can be attributed to the printing press
For sure many other things caused schisms, wars and revolutions both before and after.
But -for good or for evil- the printing press can be fingered as the direct and/or indirect culprit in quite a number of cases!
Think of the wars associated with the rise of Protestantism, or more directly the reproduction of revolutionary literature, spreading of propaganda, or the slightly unethical tabloid owners pressing for war in the 19th century.
I am thinking specifically of the rise of Protestantism yes.. War was the state of affairs between competing tribal groups for millenia across all of Europe and increasing towards the great central plains of Asia, and the Middle East. Christianity in early forms, spread literacy and some common tenants, which evolved into a "pitch" to local Feudal lords as a blueprint for society, blending existing Feudal heirarchy with civilian needs; a similar evolution happened with Islam (but I know less about that).
so WAR with military hierarchy specifically existed before the spread of the Bible and other standardized written works. The printing press expanded books, and enabled new ones. Where in that sequence is the printing press "the direct and/or indirect culprit" ? It is not, War was an objective and activity before the Bible, during the early Bible, and later with the printing press versions of the Bible. If anything, the exercise of literacy among non-priesthood, expanded 100-fold civilian activity.
It is a serious subject, so please forgive me being pedantic.
We had wars before the discovery of oil-as-a-resource, we have had wars well after the discovery of oil-as-a-resource. Arguably most wars were not caused directly or indirectly by use of oil-as-a-resource. However, some wars have directly or indirectly been about oil. New kinds of war have been made possible by oil.
Again: war existed before the invention of the printing press, and war existed after the invention of the printing press. Arguably most wars were not caused directly or indirectly by the printing press. The use of military hierarchy in warfare predates the printing press.
However, in some wars, the cause can be lead back to the use of the printing press, directly or indirectly. And some new forms of warfare are made possible by the printing press.
While we can argue how essential a printing press is to the tenets of Protestantism, it is inarguable that the spread of the protestant faith was greatly accelerated by the ability to print pamphlets and disseminate the writings of Martin Luther and other reformers. Protestantism's concept of 'Sola scriptura' also required the translation of the bible into people's local language, and the dissemination of a large number of these translated bibles. Without the printing press this would have been rather tricky.
Of course, as a later consequence, the Protestant Reformation then sparked several wars between the new Protestant faith and the Catholics who considered them to be heretics.
(Eg the formation of the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Years%27_War -- The lead-up: "Charles [V] aspired to counter the Protestant Reformation and keep all his subjects obedient to the Catholic Church." )
thank you for your thoughtful reply. I find "oil-as-a-resource" to be a uniquely-awful analogy for the impacts of the printing press on civilization. We probably have many unspoken assumptions about the question that also differ.
Some people say that pulling "principle cause" from chapters of history is very difficult from a Science point of view, since the entire experiment has so many parts, and cannot be replicated. So it is here. best to all from California
At first you seemed to be reading my words as pertaining to principle causes. When I tried to correct this view by using oil as an example, you tried reading the example as an analogy instead.
Sure there is a small amount of risk in future AI, but I believe that AI present and future will give us a better chance of mitigating other existential risks.
I think Lecun may be the force behind Meta releasing useful models for individuals and organizations to use. If that is true, I would like to thank him!
I think it is pretty obvious as I got the same conclusion reading the tweet and the Forture article.
They are talking about 2 things that happened at the same time (correlation) but fail to give a factual causal link that would confirm that not having the print caused (or even collaborated with) the decline. Maybe a third factor caused both for example.
But considering the intellectual contributions of the Ottoman Empire, is there no correlation between the fact that they did not use the printing press to disseminate their knowledge as well as accelerate their discoveries imply that they stagnated compared to other empires/nations that adapted the technology? If so, then would that stagnation not have at least some correlation with their decline?
Correlation yes, as it means that it has a connection between both, but the cause might be a third thing (like a divestment from science, etc..).
But the title "ban of the printing press LED to the decline..." implies causation, which is not a conclusion you get without more facts.
Both happened at the same time, but we cannot conclude that banning the printing press caused the decline. The printing press ban might just have been another symptom of the overall misgovernment that generated the decline.
Obviously in western culture that evolved subsequent to the printing press easy publishing has become critical to how we live our modern lives and it's easy to draw a line connecting those dots, but it does not necessarily follow that the printing press either triggers or is a prerequisite for industrialization.
Even if the printing press was a major contributor to Europe's rise, that's not quite the same thing as the Ottoman's decline. Europe was eventually in a position to deal a deathblow but the Ottoman Empire had a lot of issues for a long time prior to its end (which coincided with several European empires as well). Perhaps the printing press could have helped some of these issues, but it's not at all clear it would have done more good than harm.