Knowledge, Wisdom, and Artificial Intelligence
Information Storage and Use Through History
By Mark Harris
Throughout history, knowledge has been stored in different ways. Before the advent ofwriting, all knowledge was stored in the minds of human beings. Generally, older and wiser members of society were looked to for knowledge about the past or for how best to handle situations out of the ordinary. They were expected to have the most knowledge and had applied that knowledge more than those who had lived less life than they had.
The advent of writing created a way to store information without the need for a human mind to hold said information. From then on, knowledge would never again be solely linked directly to human experience. As communication technology advanced further through history, technological inventions around writing took millennia to develop, only really accelerating after the advent of the printing press. The printing press was refined, and literacy was increased at a breakneck pace, becoming the norm for humanity early in the second half of the 20th century.
However, writing and text are now being eclipsed by newer and more advanced forms of data storage. You may be reading text on a screen, but that text is stored and transmitted in computer code. Few can read computer code, but more concerning still is that our latest inventions in communication technology aren’t just able to read our language as well as computer code; they are code.
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The Editors
Citizens Digest Staff
- Ruth McLatchie, Editor-in-Chief, Written Media
- Mike Gonzalez, Technical Editor, Writer
- Donald Wiggins, Chief Legal and Organizational Officer
- Daniel DeLuca, Chief Financial Officer
- Mark Harris, Operations Manager and Podcast Coordinator
- Elizabeth Frost, Circulation and Volunteer Manager
- Alicia Meckstroth, Contributor
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