Description
An exploration of the original Information Technology – the writing systems of history
The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet explores the origins, historical development, adaptations, linguistic properties, cultural context, and social impact of one of humankind's greatest inventions: writing systems. Now in its second edition, this popular book traces the history of writing from the earliest proto-cuneiform tablet to the latest AI-generated text. Author Amalia E. Gnanadesikan offers an engaging, highly readable narrative account of how different writing systems originated, how they evolved over time, and how they have represented languages around the world.
Concise, easy-to-digest chapters cover each of the world's major written traditions across time and space, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese characters, Bronze-Age Linear B, New World writing systems, the Roman alphabet, and many others. Updated throughout, The Writing Revolution features new and expanded coverage of the Digital Age, including Unicode, the World Wide Web, emojis, generative AI, and more.
Investigating how the creation of writing made the modern world possible, The Writing Revolution:
- Covers the world's major writing systems as well as a selection of lesser-known scripts
- Discusses papyrus, paper, the printing press, digital writing, and other associated technologies
- Features engaging examples throughout, including Egyptian funerary texts, Maya calendars, Arabic calligraphy, Morse code, and modern text messaging
- Interweaves ideas from cultural studies, archaeology, linguistics, literature, anthropology, and information science
The Writing Revolution is a must-read for students of writing systems, linguistics, information science, and intellectual history, as well as general readers with an interest in the history of written language.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Preface xi
1 The First IT Revolution 1
2 Cuneiform: Forgotten Legacy of a Forgotten People 17
3 Egyptian Hieroglyphs and the Quest for Eternity 39
4 Chinese: A Love of Paperwork 63
5 Maya Glyphs: Calendars and Kings 89
6 Linear B: The Clerks of Agamemnon 107
7 Japanese: Three Scripts Are Better than One 127
8 Cherokee: Sequoyah Reverse- Engineers 149
9 The Semitic ʼĀlep- Bēt: Egypt to Manchuria in 3,500 Years 163
10 The Empire of Sanskrit 191
11 King Sejong’s One- Man Renaissance 215
12 Greek Serendipity 233
13 The Age of Latin 255
14 The Alphabet Meets the Machine 277
15 Writing Goes to Bits 299
Appendix: Figures A.1–A.9 321
Further Reading 331
Index 361
