Chapter Eight - The Second Information Revolution

Their function as a stamp of ownership on this item or that was mundane, but the best of them carry images of astonishing vivacity and refinement -- An art critic's view of ancient cylindrical seals

While writing may be though of today as the way humans express their highest emotions and greatest ideas, the evolution of writing focused on the more mundane -- the recording of debts and wealth, sending orders, and so forth. Writing does not immediately equate to a 'civilized' society, but it does push a culture towards the ability to achieve a state-level society, from which such 'civilizing' influences as the rule of law and the rights of citizens can spring.

Telling Fortunes

It was long stated that writing arose only once in the near east, and all subsequent writing has been derivative. This argument has been abandoned by almost everyone, but was followed by another curious idea, that writing arose in different societies to serve different purposes. The Sumerians used it for economic and other practical purposes, the Mayans used it for history and astronomy, and the Chinese used it for divination. This is based upon the assumption that the earliest discovered writings in each society were the actual oldest writings, or at least the oldest use of writing in a society. The fact is that these writings have survived in each society because they were the writing put on durable materials -- clay tablets, large hunks of stone, and the bones of animals, respectively. It doesn't take much creativity to imagine that other less durable writings predated all these discoveries.

The Evolution of Writing

In Sumeria, where the oldest known writing developed, archeologists have benefited from an abundance of preserved writing on clay tablets. The fact that Sumerians used a medium for writing that survives so long has meant that historians and anthropologists have a clear idea of the earlist developments of writing -- and it seems to have evolved for bookkeeping. First, clay tokens were used to represent quantities of goods, such as a sphere or a cone for different amounts of grain. These tokens could be sealed inside a clay envelope to record a total quantity, and pressed against the sides before the envelope was sealed so that the quantity contained could be 'read' through the envelope. Eventually the 'eureka' moment came when someone realized that the 2D representation of the sphere or cone -- a circle or wedge -- could represent the quantity just as well, and the envelopes became tablets. Through more innovation and evolution, these symbols (circle and wedge) came to represent abstract quantities, one and ten, to represent amounts of anything, not just grain. These powerful abstractions allowed the Sumerians to be the first true state-level society. While the record is not so clear for the deveolpment of writing in other cultures, it is a safe bet that it evolved first to solve basic problems of day-to-day tasks and make the society run more smoothly.

Writing and Trust

Writing and non-zero-sumness go hand in hand. To increase NZS interactions, the informaiton and trust barriers must be overcome, and writing helps both. The information transmitting aspect of writing is obvious, but the trust benefits are just as great. Once writing evolves, debts can be recorded accurately and laws standardized. As Thomas Schelling observed, in a purely zero-sum relationship, there is no reason to communicate. If every benefit is at the other side's loss, you won't want to communicate anything useful, and they have no reason to believe anything you say. Once writing evolves and helps the trust barriers to be overcome, more people can live more closely with less friction, making a more dense societal brain and spurring greater innovations. It also lets larger groups come together for common purposes, which is one reason why it has been universally adopted -- if you don't use writing effectively to overcome trust barriers and bring people together, you will be conquered by those who do.

Bureaucratic Brains

Writing helped create a bureaucratic government, where work was done by specialists and transactions, taxes, and deeds recorded. Writing not only helped intra-society relations, but helped neighboring kingdoms maintain relationships, since long, precise messages could be transmitted without the need for face-to-face communications. The writing also served as proof of a commitment, and along with the standard practices of uniting kingdoms with marriages and using kinship terms when discussing the relationships between kings, were used to cement friendly relationships between societies.

Piles of Corpses

While writing helped cement relationships between societies, it was often to aid in conflict with another society. As more and more people were able to live closely together, the scale of wars increased. The ability for a society to manage large armies, taxation, and other functions is due to a great extent to its ability to transmit information quickly and clearly. While it is said that there have been many 'illiterate' state societies, including the Incas or the West African Ashanti, they all had effective means of data transmission. The Incas used quipu (colored strings with knots) to record information, and had systems of runners set up across the kingdom at intervals of one to five miles (depending on terrain) to transmit messages. The Ashanti had systems of drummers set up to transmit data at increadible rates over long distances. These classifications by energy and information technology, while not perfect, are far better indicators of a society than the metallurgically based names 'Stone Age' or 'Bronze Age'.

One Man's NZS Is Another Man's ZS

While state-level societies managed to bring exploitation of the masses to a new level through writing, it is a common theme in history that new technologies first advance the interests of those who control them, but over time they become widespread throughout a society and in the end benefit everyone. The early scribes of Mesopotamia were a small, elite class, and rulers monopolized their use to control commoners. As time goes on, though, the power of writing spreads to more and more people, giving them the ability to use it for their own ends, usually weakening the ruler's absolute control. The same can be said of the advent of portable money -- it let individuals trade without the involvement of the rulers, letting them acrue wealth and in the end benefiting society as a whole.