Around 3000 BCE, written language emerged for the first time in human history. The rise of city-states engendered an ever-growing economy, and people could no longer maintain transactional records solely in their minds. Economic progress would halt unless someone found a way to solve the problem of our limited memory. Such is the genesis of writing--birthed as a solution to a problem, a pathway to progress. There is much anxiety around automation, understandably so. In the modern economy, humans are employed to the extent that the job at hand requires physical labor, cognitive ability, or...