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.

The First Tablets

Sumer, the edubba, and the birth of the scribe. The first time humans decided memory was too important to leave to humans.

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.

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.