Long before the AI language models got good at writing, or rather generating text, humanity went through its first information revolution: the invention of writing. Similar to other technologies, making marks on clay or papyrus led to changes in how societies organized themselves, conducted business, and preserved knowledge.
The Dawn of Documentation
Around 3200 BCE in ancient Sumer (modern-day southern Iraq), a revolutionary technology emerged: cuneiform writing. Archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat wrote that what began as simple pictographs scratched into clay tablets to track trade goods (because apparently, "I'll remember how many sheep I own" wasn't working out so well) became a sophisticated system for recording everything from astronomical observations to epic poetry. What started as accounting records of the time, within generations, these basic records evolved into complex systems for managing large-scale agriculture, trade networks, and eventually, entire empires. As historian Marc Van De Mieroop notes, this was the birth of bureaucracy!
The Original Knowledge Workers
The impact on the ancient workforce was profound. Writing created new professional classes, much like today's digital revolution (though with considerably less debate about hybrid work or RTO). According to scholar David Brown, the emergence of specialized scribes represented the world's first knowledge worker class – the original "digital" nomads, if you will, armed with styluses instead of laptops. Scribes became essential knowledge workers, commanding high status and good wages. Administrators emerged to manage increasingly complex organizations. Teachers appeared to train new generations in this new skill. Merchants could now coordinate trade across distances. Religious officials gained power through their control of sacred texts. Progress accelerated.
The First Information Management Systems
Recent archeological findings provide some fascinating insights into the knowledge and information management transformation:
The Persepolis Administrative Archives (509-457 BCE) which are 30,000+ clay tablets representing the ancient ERP system of of the Persian Empire, complete with payroll systems tracking workers' rations and wages, trade routes from India to Egypt, travel authorization records for official journeys (ancient expense reports!), royal possessions inventory, tax collection records.
The Mari Letters (18th century BCE) - 25,000+ clay tablets that might be the world's first diplomatic email system and include palace operations reports, intelligence briefings about rival kingdoms, diplomatic negotiations, trade agreements, dispute resolutions, reports from spies.
The Library of Ashurbanipal (7th century BCE) was the world's first systematic library. It contained 30,000+ tablets organized by subject, the first known card catalog system, standardized formats for documents, content spanning literature, medicine, astronomy, religious texts, and administrative records, with professional librarians and archivists maintaining the collection.
The sophistication of these ancient information management systems offers an incredible analog to our modern enterprise content management. While we've moved from clay to cloud storage, many of the fundamental challenges remain the same:
How do we organize information?
How do we ensure its preservation?
How do we maintain security while enabling access?
These ancient archives prove that such questions have been central to human civilization for millennia.
Lessons for the digital age
So what conclusions can we draw? What are the parallels between ancient information revolutions and today's digital one? As organizational theorist James March might appreciate, we're not so much predicting the future as understanding the patterns of the past.
1. The Economics of Expertise: Then and Now:
According to economic historian Morris Silver, ancient scribal schools (É-DUB-BA) created the first professional certification system, shaping an early knowledge economy. Much like today’s tech bootcamps and AI certifications, they trained specialists—just with more clay tablets and fewer keyboards.
Modern Impact:
The World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report projects that 92 million jobs may be displaced by AI, while 170 million new ones may emerge
Leading tech companies report paying AI specialists premiums of 35-50% above traditional software engineering roles
The emergence of "AI translators" – professionals who bridge technical and business domains – mirrors the ancient role of scribes who mediated between administrative systems and everyday commerce
2. Information Architecture: From Clay to Cloud
UCLA archaeologist John Papadopoulos notes how ancient archives developed sophisticated cataloging systems. The Library of Ashurbanipal described above used color-coded tablets and standardized formats to structure a content management system. Today's struggles with digital asset management and metadata suggest some problems are truly timeless.
Contemporary Applications:
Blockchain's immutable ledger concept echoes cuneiform's permanence
Modern requirements for Information Security Management (ISO 27001) mirror ancient temple archives' security protocols
Digital preservation initiatives like Internet Archive face challenges that would be familiar to ancient librarians
Harvard's Peter Der Manuelian highlights how simplified writing systems (like Demotic Egyptian) eventually democratized literacy. Today's no-code platforms and AI interfaces are driving a similar democratization of technical capability. Though hopefully with fewer hieroglyphics to memorize!
Recent Developments:
GPT-4's multilingual capabilities echo ancient scribes' mastery of multiple scripts
GitHub Copilot represents a modern "apprentice scribe" system
The rise of “citizen developers” parallels the spread of literacy beyond professional scribes
3. Measuring Transformation: Metrics Across Millennia
Throughout history, societies have measured progress using the tools and data available to them—from ancient urban expansion and trade patterns to today's digital transformation ROI and workplace productivity metrics.
Then (Archaeological Evidence):
Urban growth rates (analyzed through settlement pattern studies)
Trade volume increases (quantified through pottery distribution analysis)
Administrative complexity (measured through text type diversity)
Now (Contemporary Metrics):
Digital transformation ROI (McKinsey cost decrease, revenue increase from AI adoption)
Knowledge worker productivity (Deloitte time spent, incl. focus/deep think, collaboration)
Office space ROI (Atlassian visitor engagement, utilization, cost per visit)
Ancient Insights for Future Challenges
The writing revolution provides some great lessons for modernity:
Integration over replacement - ancient societies didn't abandon oral traditions when writing emerged; they integrated them. Successful AI adoption will likely blend human and machine capabilities rather than replacing one with the other.
Social infrastructure matters - success of writing depended as much on developing social institutions (schools, libraries, legal codes) as on the technology itself. Today's organizations need similar attention to developing AI governance structures and ethical frameworks.
Skills adaptation is cyclical - just as ancient societies developed systems for continuous learning and knowledge transfer, modern organizations need upskilling frameworks for the AI age.
While technology keeps getting more sophisticated and abstracted, the core challenges of managing knowledge, adapting skills, and integrating new tools remain timeless. The real irony? After 5,000 years of innovation, we’re still just trying to keep our records from getting lost—whether in a flood or a server crash.
This is a post in our year-long series "We've Been Here Before." Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly insights about historical transformations and their lessons for the AI age.
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