"Writing is one of the most significant technological advancements of human history and has enabled every development of human society. Writing allows people to communicate across vast distances and to protect against the loss of knowledge across generations, and ultimately the use of writing has changed the way we conceptualize speech and language and shapes our use of spoken language. The Writing Revolution, Second Edition, is an interdisciplinary examination of the history and development of writing across generations of human civilization, from the ancient world to the present day. Bringing together examinations based in linguistics, history, culture studies, and technology studies, this valuable text offers readers an analysis of the greater significance of writing for human history through a geographically organized consideration of some of the major writing systems of history, beginning with cuneiform and ending with binary. Readers will learn the different reasons different scripts came to be and the various ways that spoken languages relate to their written forms. Readers will also come to understand how writing has enabled a modern technological revolution, allowing communication from human to machine and between machines. The new edition will be updated to account for new research that has emerged since 2008 and to renew and replace figures throughout the text, where advancements in documentation and script research have provided more reliable reproductions of historical script. In the new edition, the 'Alphabet Meets Machine' chapter will also be divided into two chapters, offering more space to chart the modern progression of scripts and writing from typewriters to emojis"-- Provided by publisher.