Word Technologies

In the full swing of the Information Age, we face interesting questions about the intersection of Information, the most basic form of which is language; Technology, humanity's departure from nature; and Art, an interpretive expression of ideas and emotions. It is interesting to note that in the ancient Greek word "tekne" from which the word"technology" derives, refers not only to scientific advancement, but to arts and crafts. Since its most primitive occurrence, art has been defined by the technologies it requires. One of the oldest pieces of art is an animal thigh bone with holes drilled in it (perhaps a crude flute), found near a neanderthal cave from 45,000 years ago. Was this ancient instrument used for communication? Did music predate language? According to paleobiologists and anthropologists, this and other artistic tools are distinct from nature. The very term "art" is related to "artificial",  that is, not naturally occurring. Language, on the other hand, is a natural tendency of humans, and so not technology. Of course, this distinction comes with apparent exceptions to the rule. Take Casper Hauser for example, a child isolated from human contact until the age of 16. When first encountered, he was barely able to walk, and incapable of speech. And yet, after a few years of socialization and education, he developed the skills to write, read, draw, talk, and interact. So which of these tendencies are intrinsic in human biology, and which artificial? 

It was Noam Chomsky who revolutionized linguistics in the 50's and claimed that language was genetically ingrained in us. Indeed, the human capacity for learning language is staggering. The average high school graduate has a vocabulary of approximately 100,000 words. Divided by 18 years and 365 days, that amounts to an average of 15 words per day. But a disproportionate percent of that vocabulary was developed at relatively early age, resulting in an even higher rate of learning.

Granted, this rate of learning is vastly greater than that of humans 45,000 years ago. What changed in between? Perhaps the greatest invention in human history: writing. As might be expected, letters developed from highly modified pictographs. Sumerian cuneiforms, the earliest form of writing, appeared some 5000 years ago, it changed the auditory, insubstantial form of verbal communication into a concrete visual medium. It's primary purpose in those early days was bookkeeping to keep track of trade. 

The written word developed substantially, and appeared in various cultures over the next few thousand years. Still, the manner by which information was passed along remained largely unchanged. The Sumerians had made clay stamps allowing them to reproduce the same text or imagery many times. The Chinese had mastered printmaking, but it was Gutenberg and his movable type that revolutionized the transfer of knowledge yet again. This was largely because the European alphabet, developed by the Phoenecians, had few enough characters to be efficiently reorganized to make new words. The Chinese language, on the other hand, consisted of thousands of distinct characters, so a printing press would have been unfeasible.

Methods of text reproduction have progressed in leaps and bounds since then, with entire libraries now being transferred across the world with the click of a button. However, regardless of the way it has been recorded, written language has always been written by humans.