Well, so long as we're on the China theme, there's the point that China, not Gutenberg, came up with paper, printing, and moveable type.

The question of why China didn't take the leap to a fully technical civilisation is ... an interesting one. It's called "The Needham Question" and was essentially what Needham was trying to answer in producing Science and Civilisation. Responses remain ... unsatisfactory.

If you're interested in printing and media (a topic I've been exploring in some depth), there's the rate of growth of publishing in Europe. Buringh & van Zanden provide an account of European manuscripts and books from 600 - 1800:

Buringh, Eltjo; van Zanden, Jan Luiten (2009), "Charting the "Rise of the West": Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries", The Journal of Economic History, 69 (2): 409–445, doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837

From memory, the count in 1400 was roughly 30,000 volumes in all of Europe. That's not titles, that's total instances of all books throughout the continent.

By 1500, roughly 200 million, by 1600, ~525m, and nearly 1 billion total books by 1800.

Books were still tremendously expensive in the late 18th century. I believe Wealth of Nations sold for about 5L per copy, which was about a quarter of a labourer's annual wage.

Four factors had a huge impact in the 19th century:

1. Iron-framed presses. Sturdier and higher-output than a wood press.

2. Cheap pulp paper. I believe this came online in the 1830s.

3. Steam-powered presses. Output increased from on the order of 120 impressions/hour to thousands, then 10,000 by mid-century.

4. Literacy. Books do little good if you cannot read. Increased industrial work had created a demand for functional literacy and universal education amongst the masses. Europe's literacy rates rose from ~25% to 90%+ over the 19th century.

The relationship of technology to capability and/or science is ... interesting. Science doesn't always lead technology, and quite often follows it. Thermodynamics is a key example -- it was born of steam engines, and not the other way 'round. (Yes, there are counterexamples.)

There's also the early plateau of a great many inventions and innovations: automobile innovation hit a peak in the 1920s (measured by patents, as well as rate-of-performance or -efficiency metrics), aircraft only shortly after. The DC-3 was first produced in 1935 and remains in active service. Robert J. Gordon (Rise and Fall of American Growth) refers to it as "the most perfect aircraft ever built".

The development of fossil fuel resources required a bootstrapping process, and as with most such processes, a correct sequencing. Coal begat pumps begat steam pumps begat iron begat railroads begat telegraph begat Bessemer steel and dynamos begat electric motors begat oil drills begat tank cars begat pipelines begat internal combustion engines begat steam turbines begat gas turbines.... (Somewhat out of sequence, though you get the general drift.)

The vast majority of all power generation (electrical or traction) still comes from the Otto 4-cycle, Diesel, Parsons-derived steam turbine, or Curtis-derived gas turbine. All of these are 19th century technologies. (Charles Curtis's gas turbine sneaks in just under the wire: 1899.)

There's more than just fuel-based engines, to technology, mind. But the "unlimited potential" of Moore's Law exponentiating capabilities are limited to a small subset of mechanisms.

I've been trying to construct an ontology of technological mechanisms, earlier work linked below lists 7 elements, I'm now up to nine:

1. Fuels and fuel-based systems.

2. Power transfer and transformation. Shafts, levers, wheels, belts, electricity, magnetism, ...

3. Materials: capabilities enabled by virtue of material properties, and constrained by their limits and abundance.

4. Systemic (scientific) knowledge.

5. Process (technical) knowledge.

6. Organisation: Management of both human and non-human systems: governance, military, religion, law, business, finance, and cybernetics.

7. Network and dendritic structures. Comms, transport, trade, information, and electronic networks.

8. Information: sensing, measurement, processing, storing, and transmitting, through natural or augmented means.

9. "Hygiene". I'm still looking for a good word, but essentially, side-effect, unintended consequence, and negative-outcomes management. Pollution, sink exhaustion, systemic disruption, "bite-back".

I'm actively soliciting suggestions or criticisms.

I'm familiar with Wilson (love his work) and Bostrom (somewhat less enchanted).

https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-ms8nww

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5h6fgg/seeking...