I think they were exciting times because people would draw together to share information through story telling, and in our hearts, we re all storytellers and love to be entertained by stories. Think about it. When we were young we wanted to have stories read to us, and now as most readers of HQ are probably parents we read stories to our children. Most all movies are based on stories. So are the attractions at amusement parks, even when we re not aware of the fact that there is a story driving the experience.
Stories make up a base fabric of our society.
But stories do more than just entertain. They also educate and inform us of far away places, times and cultures. The invention of written communication allowed for stories to survive the ages and it also allowed for the creation of stories to chronicle events. In short, written communication and storytelling allowed our species to move to a new level, one where folklore, shared through memorized stories, became knowledge and information because it could be stored, shared and analyzed by many people simultaneously. I sometimes think that as application designers we re walking around our programs solely focused on tables and forms.