From Scrolls to Systems: The Journey of Human Knowledge
Reflections on Papyrus, The Great Library of Alexandria, and the Evolution of Information Storage
Have you ever read a book that completely blew you away?
I recently read Papyrus by Irene Vallejo. I love books and am fascinated by Ancient Greek and Roman history, so it was right up my alley.
Around fifty pages in, it was clear that it was nothing like what I expected…in the best of ways. I had anticipated reading a historical account of the invention of books and how they evolved. To be clear, Papyrus covers all of that. What took it to the next level, however, was the personality, passion, and style injected throughout the text. It’s full of beautifully written passages that hit me at a deeper level.
Like this one:
Let’s talk about you for a moment, the person reading these lines. Right now, with the book open in your hands, you are engaged in a mysterious, unsettling activity, though habit prevents you from being amazed. Think carefully. You are completely quiet, eyes moving over rows of letters made into meaning, that deliver ideas independent from the world now surrounding you. In other words, you have withdrawn to an inner chamber where absent voices speak, where there are ghosts only you can see (in this case, my phantom self), and where the pace of time’s passage is the measure of your level of interest or boredom. You have created a parallel world like the illusion of cinema, a world that depends on you alone. At any moment, you can avert your gaze from these lines and return to the action and movement of the outside world. But in the meantime, you remain on the edge, in the place where you’ve chosen to be. There is an almost magical aura to the act of reading.
Or this one:
The alphabet was an even more revolutionary technology than the internet. It built that communal memory for the first time, within the reach of anyone. Neither wisdom nor literature fit completely into a single mind, but thanks to books, each of us finds the door open to all the knowledge and stories in existence. We can believe, like Socrates, that we have become a pack of conceited fools. Or we can believe that, thanks to written culture, we are part of the largest and most intelligent brain that has ever existed.
Or, perhaps this one:
You are a special kind of reader. You come from a long line of innovators. This silent dialogue between you and me, free and secret, is an extraordinary invention.
I could add many more passages from the book — much of my copy is marked with my notes and underlines — but you get the point. Papyrus is more than just a history of how books evolved over time. It’s a love letter to books, full of Vallejo’s personal connection to them.
Papyrus was such a wonderful read that I can’t recommend highly enough. It would have easily made the list of my favorite books I read in 2024 and has jumped into the pole spot as the best book I’ve read thus far in 2025.
The Great Library of Alexandria
Throughout Papyrus, Vallejo guides the reader through a captivating exploration of how books transformed over time, influencing culture and spreading ideas throughout history. Papyrus pays special attention to the years of the Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. While written literature existed before the Greeks and continued long after the fall of the Romans, it was during this period that books established themselves as one of humanity’s greatest inventions.
Papyrus begins its first few pages in Alexandria, Egypt. Vallejo wrote about Alexander the Great and his military campaigns through Turkey, Greece, and Persia, eventually reaching India. The Greek philosopher and historian Plutarch says Alexander founded no less than seventy cities throughout his conquests. None became as influential as this site on the Mediterranean on the western edge of the Nile River delta.
Alexander’s prowess as a general on the battlefield is widely known, though few are aware of his deep appreciation for literature. It was said that he slept with a copy of The Iliad and a dagger under his pillow. He wanted to live through eternity and have his own legend etched in stories — much like his hero, Achilles. I’d say that his mission was successful, considering that many of us still know his name over 2,000 years later.
Unfortunately, Alexander didn’t live long enough to see this dream come to fruition. When he died, his empire was divided among his generals. One of these men, Ptolemy I Soter, established his capital in Alexandria. He channeled great riches into the building of the Great Library of Alexandria, laying the groundwork for the legend of Alexander to continue to grow.
Although some ancient sources credit Ptolemy I with the initial idea for the Great Library, today’s scholars generally attribute its full implementation to Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Under Ptolemy II, the library became a central feature of a larger research institution known as the Musaeum, a “shrine of the Muses” that functioned much like a modern university. In his mind, he was “bringing together all existing books in a symbolic, intellectual, and peaceful way of possessing the world.”
The Great Library was conceived as a universal repository to gather all the world’s knowledge and evolved into the premier center for scholarship in the ancient world. The Ptolemaic rulers implemented rigorous collection policies to fill its contents. Every ship that docked in Alexandria was searched, and any books on board were confiscated and copied by royal scribes. Originals were added to the library’s holdings, and replicas were returned to the ships. Aggressive tactics like this helped create an unrivaled collection of information in breadth and diversity.
The exact size of the Great Library’s collection is a matter of debate, but what’s clear is that it was likely the most extensive storage of knowledge ever assembled to that point in history. Estimates vary widely, but scholars have estimated that it held at least 40,000 scrolls and may have housed as many as 400,000. These scrolls covered many subjects — from literature and philosophy to science, mathematics, history, and beyond — and included works from Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and countless others.
I have a deep affinity for libraries and bookstores. I love wandering from aisle to aisle, adding more things to my always-growing “to read” list. My wife instinctively knows that anytime we pass an interesting-looking bookstore, especially when traveling, I will want to duck in and spend 30 minutes browsing the shelves.
After it was built in the 3rd century BC, The Great Library would have been where the world’s most intelligent minds would have gathered and worked. I can’t help but be enamored with the level of knowledge that must have permeated the grounds there.
All the knowledge in the world and many of the greatest thinkers alive — both in one place. It was like a petri dish of inspiration, the perfect place for discoveries that would shape the world for centuries into the future.
The Evolution of Information Storage and Second Brains
A few months ago, I wrote about a second brain — a location, usually digital, where one can effectively capture and organize information, and access it later for various purposes. While implementing a digital repository for knowledge is a 21st-century solution, the idea of a singular place to house knowledge dates back to Alexander, the Ptolemies, and The Great Library.
Knowledge management has been an essential skill for as long as humans have existed. It is how we have evolved into the dominant species on the planet. We don’t control the earth because we are the strongest or fastest animals; we control it because of our ability to think, reason, and communicate.
Throughout much of human history, knowledge was passed on from person to person through lived experiences and oral storytelling. People learned from their surroundings and shared their insights within their tribes using language as their tool. This method allowed them to acquire new skills, lessons, and ideas. Although some could internalize learnings better than others, their wisdom was lost with them if they couldn’t share it effectively. There was no written record, no codification.
In around 3500 BC, the ancient Sumerians invented writing. The first people to write did so to conduct business — the oldest known writing artifacts are ledgers used for record-keeping. Early economies in antiquity fueled the innovation of writing out of necessity. It was too difficult to store knowledge and document deals in one’s head, so people invented the methods and tools to capture it externally.
As the act of writing evolved, information storage solutions also changed, fueled by innovation and invention. Progress fueled technological advancements from papyrus, parchment, and the printing press to computers, the cloud, and cryptography. In the past 40 years, the digital world has taken over and allowed us to store as much information as we like.
The ability to capture information is just one piece of the puzzle. As noted above, we also need systems to catalog and organize all of this knowledge. One of the first organizational systems in history was created at The Great Library by the 3rd century BC poet Callimachus. The system was known as The Pinakes. Vallejo called it “an essential search tool, the first great map of literature, a portolan chart for navigating the great ocean of the Library of Alexandria.” For each author, Callimachus wrote a brief biography, a list of their distinguishments, and a complete list of their works in alphabetical order. It was greatly influential to future librarians.
Our knowledge storage and organization methods have progressed over time, with innovations at all scales. There were contributions to personal organization methods, such as John Locke’s system for organizing Commonplace Books. We’ve also seen systemic innovations, such as the Dewey Decimal System, which was drilled into my 8-year-old brain in my elementary school library.
Modern digital systems have significantly increased the amount of information we can capture. Today, sophisticated database engines and metadata-driven tagging systems store large amounts of raw data and add layers of structure, context, and relationships.
It’s incredible to see how far we’ve come from the vision that started with Alexandria’s conquest almost 2,500 years ago. As time has passed, the pace of progress continues to increase exponentially. When you think about how far things have come in just the last 10-15 years, the advancements are significant.
In 2010, most knowledge workers worked on laptops and could capture notes like we do today. We used paper notebooks or wrote on our computers through apps like Evernote or Google Docs. We could save files — like videos, pictures, or PDFs — on our computers or a work server. Some sophisticated tech adopters used earlier cloud-based platforms, such as Dropbox. When we found knowledge on the web, we could save the URL or the content on that page to a folder in one of the above locations.
I’ll admit that the progress hasn’t been that staggering for these use cases. But this was just the capture step, which is an easier problem. A greater challenge exists in storing the information. And in 2010, we had to use many different apps and or systems, injecting complexity into the storage process.
Today, there are many more options to significantly reduce this friction. I am writing in one as we speak — I use Notion and have built a workspace that can capture almost anything. Don’t like Notion? That’s okay. There are many alternatives, such as Obsidian, Airtable, and Coda. Instead of searching through multiple apps for different types of information, all of your knowledge can now be stored in one place.
When I say all of your knowledge, I mean all of it. Here is what currently flows into my Notion workspace:
My entire planning system exists within Notion. It contains longer-term goals, projects — big and small, workstreams, and tasks. Everything down to the to-do list on my daily plan ends up in it. As I progress on my plan, I track and manage it there.
I put all of my professional work into Notion. I use it to store most of my project plans, tasks, meeting notes, brainstorming ideas, and other miscellaneous thoughts.
Occasionally, I take notes in a physical notebook. I keep multiple offline paper notebooks in various places — in my house, car, and backpack. I use them when entering notes into my computer or phone is slower. If the note is important, I’ll transfer it to Notion later.
I read lots of books. While reading, I underline passages and take notes in the margins. After I finish a book, I take another 1-2 hours (sometimes over multiple sessions) to transfer the notes that I took throughout into Notion. I usually invest 8-10 hours to read a 300-page book, so it’s worth spending another hour or two to review my notes to internalize what I read and clarify my thoughts.
Some of the emails and newsletters I receive in my inbox are relevant to a project I’m working on or an area I study. Others are interesting to me and worth saving for later. I’ve set up a simple forwarding address to route anything I want to save into Notion.
If I see a web page or YouTube video I like, I can quickly enter the URL and any relevant content from the page into Notion through a Chrome web extension called Flylighter.
Between walks and workouts, I generally listen to at least 1-2 hours of podcasts daily. This year, I switched to a new app called Snipd. It transcribes episodes and uses AI to summarize key highlights for me. After I finish each episode, everything is sent directly into my Notion. I am not getting paid by them, but I should — I can’t say enough good things about it.
I could continue, but you get the picture.
I’ve organized everything using Tiago Forte’s PARA framework. I have built systems to triage each piece of information to its proper location as it enters my workspace. It can be tagged to a Project I’m working on, an Area I want to maintain, or a Resource I might find useful later. When things no longer have a purpose and don’t fit into one of the above categories, they are moved to an Archive that I can always access if I need it later.
With a comprehensive system that efficiently captures and organizes everything, there’s one more step to create something magical: the ability to seamlessly access its contents and draw connections.
Making Connections to Unlock Creativity
Steve Jobs once said, “Creativity is just connecting things.” Many great creations in history have come from disparate connections. Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press by adapting the mechanics of a wine press and using coin-minting techniques; Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by observing that a mold contaminant in his bacterial cultures killed nearby bacteria; the Wright Brothers drew inspiration from bicycle mechanics when they developed the first airplane. These transformative inventions all came from the connections of ideas across multiple disciplines.
Most of us won’t have the skills, timing, or luck to make history-altering connections from our experiences. However, we can significantly improve our current abilities with the help of technology. Large Language Models (LLMs) have the incredible ability to synthesize large quantities of text to make meaningful insights. And now, with tools like Notion, we can translate everything into a format that can be ingested into an LLM and tag it with lots of metadata. With the right inputs, they can help us make more multidisciplinary connections.
The tools aren’t perfect yet. I’ve had mixed success with Notion AI, although, to be fair, I am still learning how to prompt it effectively. However, I have read about some promising projects, including one I plan to explore after its creator completes its six-part course.
One of the biggest limiters in productivity is friction. Anything that requires even the slightest extra effort will slow progress. Technology that reduces friction by making it easier to connect things will increase our creativity. It’ll help us “just connect more things.”
In this regard, an LLM is the next step towards a true second brain system. A good LLM model can be thought of as an engine that will drive our second brain systems. It can access our documented thoughts, notes, and ideas to help us make connections we’d otherwise overlook.
From Alexandria’s Great Library to the AI-powered second brains we’re building today, Papyrus reveals the continuous human desire to extend our collective memory. What began with Callimachus carefully indexing scrolls has evolved into sophisticated digital systems that store information and help us discover connections we might otherwise miss.
Vallejo’s book beautifully captures both the practical and poetic dimensions of this evolution. While reading about ancient librarians painstakingly copying manuscripts, I couldn’t help but see parallels to my own careful curation of notes in Notion. The tools have changed dramatically, but the fundamental human impulse remains: to preserve what we know, to build upon it, and to pass it forward. As we stand at the threshold of AI-assisted knowledge management, Papyrus reminds us that we’re not witnessing something entirely new but rather the latest chapter in humanity’s ongoing conversation with itself. This is a conversation I feel privileged to participate in, both as a reader of Vallejo’s magnificent work and as a curator of my own personal digital Great Library of Alexandria.
All the best,
Lukich