The key development that led to the first Renaissance was not just a wider accessibility of ideas contained in ancient texts, but that technology is not simply an invention but a revolution unto itself, which exerts "a gravitational effect on cognition which in turn affects social organisation and perceptual habits".
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)
The first Renaissance was the invention of the mechanised Gutenberg printing press.
Modern day Renaissance is the digital Gutenberg - and has done so with more democratic universality than the original.
