That shouldn't be too surprising. The technology used deeply influences writing. In the Latin alphabet, the upper case forms developed from the forms of letters used in stone and metal, with monumental carvings. While lowercase evolved from the kind of writing done with pen or brush on parchment or papyrus. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot more straight lines amenable to carving into stone in the upper case letters.

As I understand it, printed f and long S looked very much alike, and the usual tweaks in handwriting to make it clear weren't really easy in print. So they just dropped it altogether. One less letter required in the typeface, too.

Wouldn't be the only one: The English thorn Þ character (making the "th" sound) was replaced by either the "y" character ("ye olde shoppe" was pronounced "the") or the digraph "th" based on a French mispronunciation (A really fast "tuh-huh" is pretty similar to the "th" sound) for use on printing presses made for countries without it.

Reading your comment the first modern parallel that pops to mind is emojis.