History of Data

From Cave Paintings to Lakehouses — Forty Years of Patterns

Every era in this book shows the same loop closing — an economic pressure forces a technical move; the technical move unlocks a new economic regime, which in turn produces the pressure that forces the next. Understanding these patterns is the fastest way to know where your platform is heading next. And the clearest way to stop repeating what everyone before you already tried.

The First Tablets

Sumer, the edubba, and the birth of the scribe. The first time humans decided that memory was too important to trust to a human.

Rome — Industrialising the Census

The Cursus Publicus as a data pipeline. What a 2,000-year-old postal network tells us about modern streaming architecture.

The House of Wisdom to Print

Islamic Golden Age curation, medieval scriptoria, the printing press as the first mass-data event. Schema drift is not a modern problem.