Clay tablet writing was invented before 9000 BC and lasted until nearly the common era.
Papyrus was invented before 3000 BC and similarly lasted thousands of years.
Pulp paper was invented around 200 CE in China and spread west around 750 CE.
While printing pre-dates Gutenberg, he revolutionised it by inventing moveable-type in 1439 CE.
Hot metal typesetting, typically used for newspapers, was invented in 1884 CE and lasted until the 1950s to 1980s.
Xerography was invented in 1938 has already started to become less commonly used, even in business settings.
Digital printing become popular in the 1980s to early 90s and is still used but also dropping in popularity.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989.
HTML 2 was 1995.
HTML 3 was 1997.
HTML 4 was late 1997.
XHTML 1.1 was 2001.
HTML 5 was 2008 onwards.
All of the above are technologies used to record and disseminate human knowledge, and form part of the same technological evolution. I type text right now in much the same way as a linotype operator would. I send this out to interested parties in the same way a letter written with quill might be copied several times and mailed to a group a hundred or more years ago.
There were periods of time a hundred generations long where nothing fundamentally changed about how this occurred! You could write things on clay or papyrus, and that was about it.
Notice anything about those periods of time? They're getting shorter and shorter. They went from thousands of years to hundreds, then mere decades and now individual years.
The WWW is nearly unrecognisable compared to its first iteration and has been around for less than most humans' lifetimes. It wasn't just invented after I was born, it was invented at a time that I was already on my third computer!
It is a beyond hopeless task to attempt to predict what the next 500 years will bring. Thanks to this exponential pace of change, I doubt anyone can predict much past the next 5 years with any certainty...
Papyrus was invented before 3000 BC and similarly lasted thousands of years.
Pulp paper was invented around 200 CE in China and spread west around 750 CE.
While printing pre-dates Gutenberg, he revolutionised it by inventing moveable-type in 1439 CE.
Hot metal typesetting, typically used for newspapers, was invented in 1884 CE and lasted until the 1950s to 1980s.
Xerography was invented in 1938 has already started to become less commonly used, even in business settings.
Digital printing become popular in the 1980s to early 90s and is still used but also dropping in popularity.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989.
HTML 2 was 1995.
HTML 3 was 1997.
HTML 4 was late 1997.
XHTML 1.1 was 2001.
HTML 5 was 2008 onwards.
All of the above are technologies used to record and disseminate human knowledge, and form part of the same technological evolution. I type text right now in much the same way as a linotype operator would. I send this out to interested parties in the same way a letter written with quill might be copied several times and mailed to a group a hundred or more years ago.
There were periods of time a hundred generations long where nothing fundamentally changed about how this occurred! You could write things on clay or papyrus, and that was about it.
Notice anything about those periods of time? They're getting shorter and shorter. They went from thousands of years to hundreds, then mere decades and now individual years.
The WWW is nearly unrecognisable compared to its first iteration and has been around for less than most humans' lifetimes. It wasn't just invented after I was born, it was invented at a time that I was already on my third computer!
It is a beyond hopeless task to attempt to predict what the next 500 years will bring. Thanks to this exponential pace of change, I doubt anyone can predict much past the next 5 years with any certainty...