alt Hacker NewsI didn't use the right word, maybe you can help me pick a better one. You are of course correct that technology has many times completely changed our societies, but my point is that despite overwhelming transformations, the core of societal organization doesn't change: those with capital control those without. Those with capital determine what labor those without may do, when, where, and what becomes of the result of that labor.
The printing press resulted in the first ultrapowerful media companies that were able to capitalize on later revolutionary technologies such as radio and television (for those nimble enough to keep up with the times). Even in that era the newspaper was leveraged to serve the needs of the wealthy and solidify their power. Countless unpublished books that couldn't get picked up by the publishing houses. And the end game of those media technologies is Rupert Murdoch, Disney.
You are right, power shifted from the church to other Capital holders. And the laborers continued to labor at the whim of some new master.
Railroads led to Standard Oil and America's first ultra powerful monopolies, laying rail to serve their needs (or wasting rail to suck money from the government) rather than the needs of the people.
Sailboats created the East Indian trading company and actual corpotocracies, as you said.
Incredible changes to society in so many ways except perhaps the most important, and that's my point: it won't be technology in the end. It wasn't technology that led to the syndicalization of pre Franco Spain, or the revolutions in Russia and the ROC, or the development of the Paris commune, events that signify some of the few brief times in our history that the core paradigm was shifted if only briefly.
We are totally talking about a technology-driven shift in who controls society though. In the past it was kings and the church and their wealth was certainly a factor but the king's direct control over the state monopoly on violence, and by extension over land, and the church's control over information and belief, were the greater factors. Remember all these kings started out mostly as thugs with bands of other thugs behind them who had the biggest weapons and the most violent tendencies. And the churches started out as smaller dudes who were willing to eat mushrooms, wear face paint, and tell stories about how the biggest thug in the pack was the son of a god so you had better obey him.
Now, because of technology shifts, it's the political/bureaucratic and merchant classes in charge. The king and the church are pretty much powerless. The military class has gone both ways depending on what country we're discussing. In some their growing ability to commit mass killing has given them dictatorship powers. In others they are relatively defanged by the political/merchant classes.
Wealth is a very interesting thing because it was originally a byproduct of power. The king sent soldiers to collect taxes. The church propagandized you into tithing. Now the relationship is inverted and the wealth creates the power. Silicon Valley spends $140M on lobbying to get the legislative outcomes they want.
IMO the more we zoom in to shorter spans of time the less we see technology toppling an entire class of elites in favor of another. It doesn't happen in 30 years. It takes hundreds. That said, technology seems to just keep on moving faster, so I wouldn't discount it playing a bigger role in the future than it did in the past.