The Sorcery of Ink: How Writing Conjured Modern Civilization
Before writing, humanity suffered from collective amnesia.  A master architect's ingenious drainage solution died with him. A physician's discovery about infected wounds evaporated after three generations. A merchant's trade route to distant tin mines became legend, then myth, then forgotten. Every society was trapped in a perpetual present, unable to accumulate knowledge faster than it could forget. Writing changed everything. Not because it made humans smarter—after all, t
Nov 306 min read
CHAPTER 3: HUMANS and LEARNING
Why don't chimpanzees build cities or cathedrals? It’s not for a lack of ambition, and they certainly have complex social hierarchies. The fundamental problem, as it so often is, is one of information management. Every chimpanzee generation is forced to start, more or less, from scratch. Humans, by contrast, stumbled upon the ultimate hack: we learn from the dead . This unique ability to accumulate, compound, and transmit information across time and space is the foundational
Nov 302 min read
Conclusion: Money, Trade, and the Unending Quest for Scale
The core of human progress, stripped to its essence, is about our remarkable capacity to Learn, Cooperate, and Innovate, at Scale - amplified by the trio of Money , Trade , and the Rule of Law . Money and Trade In exploring what gives rise to human progress, we started with this chapter on trade , as old as humanity itself, and money , humanity's most ingenious invention. Trade expands the overall pie, while money serves as the indispensable lubricant of economic growth. Ac
Nov 163 min read
When Distance Died: The Transport Revolution and Its Discontents
Before the late nineteenth century, the world was lumpy. It was a planet of pockets where, for millennia, distance was destiny . Travel moved at the speed of horses and sailing winds—perhaps thirty miles per day if you were lucky. A letter from London to Calcutta took four months and risked shipwreck. A person born in a rural village would likely die having traveled no farther than fifty miles from home. Markets remained stubbornly local, and cities couldn't grow beyond the
Nov 1612 min read
