By their very nature technological revolutions sever society's links to its immediate past. Instead of extrapolating the present, we can get a better feel for what lies ahead by examining a similar shift that began in the 17th century. Then as now, the plummeting cost of disseminating information created new markets and utterly transformed society. In London in 1649, a fellow named Henry Walker got his hands on an idle printing press and began printing up what we'd recognize as a weekly want-ad sheet. For any business it costs but fourpence and doth much good in bringing the buyer and seller together.
Every market depends on buyers and sellers being aware of each other.
The likelihood of a mutually profitable exchange was limited by who happened to bring what to the village market on a given day. Sky high information costs choked off most potential trades before they began. Advances in printing technology gradually drove costs down while raising page counts and the number of copies printed in each issue. In the early 1800s, Koening cylinder printing and the steam press brought printing speeds up to a thousand sheets per hour, far exceeding the 150 copy per hour rate of hand presses. Later, the railroads and 18,000 page per hour rotary presses combined to further broaden newspaper distribution.