Stephan Fry - Spreading the word

After watching this i learnt that writing has developed tremendously over the years, and when it was thought to be invented roughly 5000 years ago, it was only used numerically- for economic reasons. As time went on, writing devloped into what we now know as letters/alphabet, and they are different all over the world. Different countries have always had different methods since time began, and this can be shown by the fact that we write things down to be remembered and passed on for years; ie. The Bible. Whereas the man interviewed has all memories and histories locked in his mind, he remembered up to 53 generations, to us this is an awful lot to remember as we have always written things down to remind us, but to him he wishes he could remember more.
As i mentioned previously, we have kept written records such as the bible for many many years, however the bibles orginal parts were about tax record keeping, and they are now stored in the Bristish national museum.
Although we now write with pen and paper, many years ago that wasnt an option, so they had to find other methods, large blocks of clay were found that had been imprinted on, as a way of storing information- This began in ancient iraq, as this is where writing initially began, they started a very basic alphabet, and the thought that it would ever evolve never even crossed their minds.
Reading began to happen by 1200BC - this was the beginning of many things, Phenesians created a writing style that was appreciated by various parts of Europe and some other countires, and it was thought that the more people who could read, the easier it would be to trade. It also encouraged religion, being able to read and write gave priests ect the advantage to write down, as well a remember stories, to pass on their believes for other people to pick up for years to come.
Next i discovered that, a shrine in Jerusalem, called The shrine of books holds the "dead sea scrolls". These scrolls are so valued as they are known to have been hidden for over 2000 years, when a shephard found them. There is now a technology that is slowly decoding the original text.

Printing to many was seen as a quick was of writing, as writing back then was such a slow process. Printing originally began in china, however it didnt continue as the thousands of symbols made it too complex. Also it was said that if a symbols lines arent drawn in the correct order you would look like "a poorly educated person" and it would give off the wrong meaning.  Printing was then discovered by Johannes Gutenburg, and was used to create the first newspaper, interestingly Geoffery Chaucer was the first person to have his work printed in it.
I am facinated at the fact that over time, as technlogies devloped, the book has never been replaced, the video tapes been replaced by dvds, the internets been invented, tv, radio- but the book still remains. Even though this is the case, people insist on creating more developed and advanced versions of books, a couple mentioned- '3D virtual reality cave' and 'never ending reading machine'.
I found this documentary particularly interesting as it shows us how things have developed to get us to where we are now.