I think it's easy to look at the short-term and miss the larger picture. The printing press being the only other well documented time of this explosion of know

I think it's easy to look at the short-term and miss the larger picture. The printing press being the only other well documented time of this explosion of knowledge/technology allows us to see that no matter how power expands and then coalesces, it takes the good ideas, fragments away, and then repeats the process as a sect of the greater power.