Clay Tablets and iPhones
Carleton’s master printer, Larry Thompson, showed us clay tablets that his students had made to replicate what would’ve been used for writing before paper and parchment. He had us hold up our hands and asked what the clay tablet could compare to now. I looked down at my bag and saw my iPhone nestled in its pocket and there was a match.
The clay tablet was a portable and handheld way to share written information, unfired clay tablets could be soaked and repurposed, this made me compare it to more of an “etch-a-sketch” type of thing, but really the angle he was getting at was to compare it to our modern cell phones.
Really what this had me thinking about was the vital nature of portable information. The ability to bring it with you wherever you go is so important, especially before the common era when it was harder to communicate across distances. In my opinion, to be able to write something down and share it amongst others was a revolutionary practice.