Writing was invented about 5000 years ago. It was introduced because there were more people around and people wanted to take care of their money. The first examples of writing is all in numbers because that's all they needed at the time but eventually this erupted in to different alphabets across the world.
Reading and writing isn't classes as natural or essential, it is just something we have all picked up over the years. A tribe in North Thailand once had scriptures written on buffalo hides which were heated to keep the ink in place. Unfortunately it smelled so good, the scripts were eaten. Since said many hundred years ago, the tribe have just remebered their history and stories. The man interviewed could hold up to 53 genereations stories just in his head. He was disapointed at this because he felt it wasn't enough. He complains about the school system of writing everything down but he does see that this is a good way of preserving the tribes culture forever.
In the National British Museum, there are parts of the Bible stored away. these parts were all to do with taxing and record keeping. Actual writing began in Ancient Iraq. They began a vague alphabet but didn't realised that any form of literature would eventually formed from this. There is evidence of large blocks of clay that were imprinted on. These are classed as similar to draft books or sketch pads.
By 1200BC reading began to take off. It was around this time that the Rosetta Stone was created and this managed to translate the Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
Phenesians were the main reason that writing took off. They created a writing style and showed this to most of Europe and other parts of the world that were interested. In their point of view, the more who could read, the better as this meant that they would be able to trade together.
When this writing took off, it made religion more set in stone. Priests and Rabbis were all educated meaning that they could read, write and also remember stories well. they began writing these stories down which has helped keep them going in circles for the last 2000 years. The Wailing wall is a particularly precious and religious place for Jews. they come here to pray or to leave prayers in the wall. Some people even choose to write out the prayer and leave it in the wall. Only the Rabi is allowed to empty this wall, which occurs twice a year and gets burried in the mount of Olives. The spread of religion and the spread of reading went hand in hand. Peple became hungry for publications but for now these were only available to the rich.
A shrine in Jerusalem called The Shrine of the Book holds the so called "Dead-Sea Scrolls." These scrolls were so precious as they are said to have been hidden for 2000 years until 1946 when a Shepard stumbled across them. There are about 900 parts to this and not all is legible any more but there is a special light technology which flashes different colours of light at different velocities which is slowly helping to decode what the original text said.
The second miracle is printing. Writing was a very long winded way of recording happenings and this could take up to 3 people's life times just to finish off one book. Printing was first seen in China about 400 years before it was discovered by Johannes Gutenburg. The only reason printing didn't take off in China was because of the thousands of symbols that meant it was too difficult to grasp. The Chinese pictograms must all be drawn in a certain way otherwise it would mean something completely different.
Johannes Gutenburg realised the Chinese technique and was able to create the ever newspaper in England for Norwich.
Geoffrey Chaucer was the first person to have his literature printed out. He was very conscious of having his work printed out badly and specifically wrote to make this not happen. The printing would have pleased him.
The more and more books printed meant more demand for libraries. One man, Tita Rose began his mission to create the worlds first encyclopaedia and to have all the knowledge he could possibly get in to this book even if it was completely irrelevant.
Over the years, technology has changed the way we view books. The radio, TV, computer and eventually the internet have been invented but each time not replacing the Book. We are now living in a time of transition but so far we have proved that one medium does not kill another. if anything, since the Kindle and the iPad have been invented there have been more use for books as people don't want them to disappear. It has been proved that there are different types of reading. This calls for both the eBook and the classic book.
A lady who goes by the name "Belle D'Joux" joined the sex industry but found that talking about this to her friends would be socially unacceptable. From this she said she found it "natural" only to start up a blog to release these feelings that she often wanted to share. Over time people have been taking more and more notice of her blog and find that it is very similar to telling a story.
A new invention called the "3D virtual reality cave" is a totally amazing new way to read books. the word are now interactive and float up on a screen in front of the reader. Although this is a fantastic idea, it is obviously too expensive to achieve at the moment but maybe it will have it's time in the near future.
There is also another new invention called the "never ending reading machine." it is based like a book and even has paper to change the page with although the new technology in it is that the book is projected on to the page via an eBook system. When you are done reading the page, you can just turn the page and this interacts with the video and changes to the next slide. This is a suitable technology for all generations as all you have to do is press a button to turn it on and then turn the pages appropriately.
Another new type of technology that scientists are currently working on is a story telling movement garment. The original person wears this jackets and goes about their daily business. This is then recorded in a lab. Later on maybe thirty years down the line, an ancestor or another person can wear the same jacket but then see what a day that person went through, achieving all their movements as it would carefully guide you. This is still in the Perfection process but hopefully will be available soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment