Gutenberg's press (c. 1440) didn't immediately democratize knowledge. The first printed books were expensive luxury items, indistinguishable from manuscripts in prestige.
The disruption happened 50 years later, when printers discovered that cheap pamphlets and broadsheets were more profitable than Bibles. The Reformation was a media event — Luther's 95 Theses spread through Germany in two weeks, a speed previously impossible.
The lesson: a new medium's political effects often lag its invention by decades, and emerge through uses its inventors never intended.