The Best Technology Ever Invented

<p>There have been all sorts of wonderful technological innovations since Marcus Aurelius’s time, particularly in the domain of writing. We got the printing press. We got typewriters. We got ballpoint pens and erasers and whiteout. We got computers and smartphones. We have emails and tweets and audio memos. </p><p><a href='https://dailystoic.com/meditations-marcus-aurelius/?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&amp;utm_campaign=best-technology'>Journaling for Marcus</a> wouldn’t have been easy. He needed ink and some sort of pen-like implement, and he had to write on fragile parchment. The supplies weren’t cheap. He needed to do everything by hand. We might think we are superior for all our fancy tools and real-time digital backups and copy and paste. But are we? </p><p>In <a href='https://www.recode.net/2017/11/3/16604082/transcript-leonardo-da-vinci-biographer-walter-isaacson-recode-decode-genius-innovation-creativity'>a recent interview</a>, Walter Isaacson pointed out just how well paper has held up over the centuries: </p><p>“Paper’s not a bad technology. It is really a good technology for the storage and retrieval of information. After 500 years, we still can turn the pages of Leonardo’s notebooks. From the 1990s, Steve Jobs had some memos on a NeXT Computer in his house. Even with his tech [abilities], we couldn’t retrieve that, because the NeXT operating system no longer can retrieve the documents that well. So every now and then, one of the lessons I learned is take notes on paper in a notebook. They’ll be around 50 years for ...your grandchildren or great-grandchildren. They’ll be around maybe 500 years.”</p><p>It is remarkable that the <a href='https://dailystoic.com/letters-from-a-stoic/?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&amp;utm_campaign=best-technology'>simple letters that Seneca penned</a> by hand to a friend survive to us today and remain best read in print. It’s incredible to think that Marcus Aurelius’s journals, which also endure, were themselves influenced by the notes o