ABSTRACT
How humans communicate their knowledge: from Prometheus to Mersenne and Ted Nelson, through Inca messengers, carrier pigeons, and the Web.1
After having communicated from time immemorial using sound, mankind discovered writing. According to Aeschylus, Prometheus taught writing to mortals as just one of many useful arts, besides giving them the fire stolen from heaven. As a punishment Zeus chained him to a rock where an eagle perpetually consumed his liver; and there Prometheus lamented his fate:
.... They had neither knowledge of houses built of bricks and turned to face the sun, nor yet of work in wood; but dwelt beneath the ground like swarming ants, in sunless caves. They had no sign either of winter or of flowery spring or of fruitful summer on which they could depend, but managed everything without judgment, until I taught them to discern the risings of the stars and their settings, which are difficult to distinguish. Yes, and numbers, too, chiefest of sciences, I invented for them, and the combining of letters, creative mother of the Muses’ arts, with which to hold all things in memory.2
