We seem to be in an era like that now. Alex McIntire Weber wrote eloquently of the secret-holding capacity of bureaucracies. Mysteries, that's what can't be transferred without direct experience. The initiations of guilds and priesthoods invented ritual drama to simulate Mystery. Content is what makes text, Content is what makes text live.
Content is, what makes text live.
We live on a human scale with documents to guide us and experts to tinker out patchwork solutions that look like inviolabe laws from the 72 dpi of the bleachers.