We often hear praise for the human invention of language. What is this "language"? These days it is speech, both direct as when we are sitting together and you are telling me about the great buy you made yesterday. It is transmitted speech, as when you phone me and I hear transmissions of your voice. It is captured and recorded speech as with the lovely tape of you giving a talk.
But there is another whole area: writing. If you look into the history of writing, things often start with notches in a stick to record how many of your cattle I am to pay for. Then, we can move to the note you handed that little red-haired boy in the 4th grade. One of the most memorable books I have read about both talk and writing is Tom Wheeler's "From Gutenberg to Google", which does indeed start with the printing press and goes to today. I think it was the book "What Hath God Wrought" by Daniel Walker Howe that vibrated with excitement and incredulity over communicating with "lightning"! How else can you understand what is happening with that new-fangled "telegraph"?
You try it. Put your wife and kids in a wagon and drive from the East Coast to California being pulled along by horses. Then, get told that people are "talking" from the East Coast to Californians in a minute or two. Posh-tosh! Can't be done!!
You did your ABC's and you read "Dick and Jane" or some other thriller. Now, you can write "milk, bread and eggs" on the grocery list and tomorrow you can pull that list from your pocket and be reminded of what you need to buy. When you can, watch PBS's Nova program "How Writing Changed the World" and see how much effort and thought and trials went into making those modern valuables.
