Abstract

The ‘Gutenberg Syndrome’ is a falsifiable conceptual framework for analysing institutional responses to technologies that broaden access to cognitive production. It arises only when four conditions coincide: a substantial fall in the cost of producing or circulating symbolic content; reduced dependence on established epistemic intermediaries; displacement of their function or authority; and demands for renewed control framed in terms of safety, integrity, or public protection. Unlike regulatory capture, professional closure, or moral panic, the syndrome requires a prior loss of epistemic intermediation. It is also distinct from a regulatory moat, which occurs when compliance costs burden smaller actors more heavily than incumbents. Printing provides the historical case: it widened access while also enabling propaganda, confessional conflict, and new systems of censorship. Generative AI differs from printing by automating the production, transformation, and personalisation of content rather than reproduction alone. Article 50 of the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act presents a mixed contemporary case rather than proof of the framework. Legitimate regulation should satisfy four tests: harm proportionality, technological neutrality where feasible, institutional neutrality, and responsibility attribution. The fourth test incorporates a rebuttable presumption of tool-neutral liability.