Dwarkesh Patel

Yeah.

Huge amounts of industrial effort going into making the pages of such a book.

Neat.

I mean, I always think of there's a in Julius Caesar's description of Roman of Britain when the Romans first get to Britain.

He says the people of Britain are so poor they don't they can't afford to burn wood.

So they burn rocks.

And we know he's talking about coal.

No, he's talking about coal.

And they had coal in the days of Julius Caesar, but they didn't figure out its massive industrial utility until many, many, many, many, many, many years later.

You have the Industrial Revolution when you feel you need to.

And that's a thing about Gutenberg as well that a lot of people don't think about because people are like, Gutenberg was an inventor and invented a thing and then it had an impact.

No.

He was living in the middle of a library building boom in which there was a huge demand for books that spiked.

He invented the invention in response to that cultural change.

It isn't by chance that we got the printing press in 1450.

There was a huge boom of library buildings starting in the 1410s.

And inventors were trying to figure out ways to make books cheaper.

They were making smaller books.

They were using paper more.

They were trying to do this.