Gutenberg didn't invent the printing press.
Multiple individuals, across multiple societies, had already started developing various types of printing presses. That's the way of emerging technologies... They develop across culture in multiple ways. Progress unimpeded is funny that way.
So why did Gutenberg get the "credit"/PR? Shockingly, he printed a bible and The Church became his hype man. There's that silly Church again.
Your definition of progress is too limiting. You want to tie it down to an ideology/technology that you can specifically rail against. Progress is not a new thing, it's an ongoing process. And human beings as a whole have been subjected to the whims of those who sought to stop/slow/contain it...so it didn't usurp their individual "power". The shift you're weirdly trying to as a "new" thing...occurred almost 300 years ago. It's technologies providing societal changes that are no longer easily defined by any singular control.
I live in a country that owes much of it's foundation to the progressive philosophies of an englishman named John Locke. He had a radical thought...no man was born superior through divine right, that instead all men are born equal.
That was the kind of progress that took seed.