The printing press is surely near the top of any list of the greatest inventions of all time. Before the printing press, books were transcribed by hand, and innovations were spread by explorers and adventurers like Marco Polo who traveled the Silk Road to Asia and returned to Europe with news of paper, paper money, compasses, coal, porcelain, and more. Isolated people who lived on distant islands, in dense forests, or on the wrong side of deserts might be deprived of great inventions for centuries.
Conspiracy theories and paranoia are as old as the human race, but the internet has made their circulation fast and frenzied.
