Chris Dragan's Corner

The wheel is often mentioned as the cornerstone invention of our civilization. I’m not arguing it’s not true, but I consider writing as one of the most important inventions.

Information management such as precise collection and transfer is crucial for any civilization to make progress. Written information can be exchanged without errors. This includes everyday communication, trade, history, law. Writing also enabled progress in engineering and science.

Humans are not a good medium of information, because their memory is unreliable. They forget things, or misinterpret them. Religion and knowledge used to be passed from shaman to shaman using spoken language, whatever they forgot, had to be rediscovered again. But after the invention of writing humans started organizing into bigger groups and started creating new, magnificent technologies.

Advanced religion, which was also an important piece of the evolution of the civilization, was also not possible without writing. Every tribe used to have their own set of stories and of course they used to clash over whose stories are right. Once religious manuscripts were created, people started uniting over religion, what helped the development of nations.

Next time you’re writing something, realize that you’re using one of the most important inventions of our civilization.