I just posted something at Samizdata about a talk I’ll be doing for Christian Michel this coming Sunday, i.e. January 6th. A rerun of this, basically, but with my thinking somewhat further advanced.
In the course of my homework for this posting, and for the talk itself, I came across these two rather fine images, which nicely illustrate the two history dates loom large in my story, the invention of the printing press …:
… and the invention of the electric telegraph:
I found these images here, and here.
Note how all the books are German. A major impact of printing being nationalism.