Well, no: the printing press didn't ultimately cause that. It enabled easier communication. In fact it arguably democratised mass communication by making it so cheap. It was what was being communicated communicated that caused the strife that led to warfare.
Part of that must have been the "fake news" of its day, like [blood libel][0], but that already existed before the printing press. The other part was a reduced ability to hush up bad things. Addressing that ultimately led to major upheavals of existing power structures, and a lot of bloodshed.
For me, a more worrisome part of the internet is the effect homogenisation, as described by McLuhan in The Gutenberg Man[1]:
> McLuhan studies the emergence of what he calls Gutenberg Man, the subject produced by the change of consciousness wrought by the advent of the printed book. Apropos of his axiom, "The medium is the message," McLuhan argues that technologies are not simply inventions which people employ but are the means by which people are re-invented. The invention of movable type was the decisive moment in the change from a culture in which all the senses partook of a common interplay, to a tyranny of the visual.
> He also argued that the development of the printing press led to the creation of nationalism, dualism, domination of rationalism, automatisation of scientific research, uniformation and standardisation of culture and alienation of individuals.
> Movable type, with its ability to reproduce texts accurately and swiftly, extended the drive toward homogeneity and repeatability already in evidence in the emergence of perspectival art and the exigencies of the single "point of view".
Another interesting tangent is (mis)communication's effect on the evolution of trust, but I don't feel like writing out a whole essay about that, so I'll refer to Nicky Case's "Evolution of Trust" and hope that the connection is obvious[2].
Part of that must have been the "fake news" of its day, like [blood libel][0], but that already existed before the printing press. The other part was a reduced ability to hush up bad things. Addressing that ultimately led to major upheavals of existing power structures, and a lot of bloodshed.
For me, a more worrisome part of the internet is the effect homogenisation, as described by McLuhan in The Gutenberg Man[1]:
> McLuhan studies the emergence of what he calls Gutenberg Man, the subject produced by the change of consciousness wrought by the advent of the printed book. Apropos of his axiom, "The medium is the message," McLuhan argues that technologies are not simply inventions which people employ but are the means by which people are re-invented. The invention of movable type was the decisive moment in the change from a culture in which all the senses partook of a common interplay, to a tyranny of the visual.
> He also argued that the development of the printing press led to the creation of nationalism, dualism, domination of rationalism, automatisation of scientific research, uniformation and standardisation of culture and alienation of individuals.
> Movable type, with its ability to reproduce texts accurately and swiftly, extended the drive toward homogeneity and repeatability already in evidence in the emergence of perspectival art and the exigencies of the single "point of view".
Another interesting tangent is (mis)communication's effect on the evolution of trust, but I don't feel like writing out a whole essay about that, so I'll refer to Nicky Case's "Evolution of Trust" and hope that the connection is obvious[2].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gutenberg_Galaxy
[2] http://ncase.me/trust/