Printing

Writing helped accountants keep ledgers, merchants spread information, and priests approach God. Printing distributed all of these to a wider audience, and lubricated the gears of capital. Itself capital-intensive, it made new technological demands and produced a new consciousness among the literate. Novels were suddenly possible, though it took time for writers to life their pens. Shakespeare's plays were live and in person but they survive today courtesy of the printed folios.