It's mind boggling. Even in the age of text, Gibbon spent 10 years writing The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (~1776-1787). I think that's

It's mind boggling. Even in the age of text, Gibbon spent 10 years writing The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (~1776-1787). I think that's the fundamental shift that the writing, and then the printing press and then global information networks, produced. Suddenly the ratio of time_to_share : time_to_discover was permanently decreased, to the benefit of all of humanity. Contrast with an oral tradition, transmitted via apprenticeship.