The world is an ever-changing, wondrous place, eh? Just a few hundred years ago the vast majority of the human population was illiterate - could neither read nor write, and what the vast majority knew was what they could recall of their own experience, or the experiences of others that they had either been told about or had witnessed themselves.
Which is somewhat of a mind-boggling thing when you consider that before the year 1440 only the extremely wealthy could afford a book (not to mention the education necessary to make use of the book).
Before 1440, the year Gutenberg invented the printing press, books were tediously created one page at a time by scribes - the best of these scribes could copy two or three thousand words a day, which means that it could take up to six months to produce one copy of the Bible - longer if illustrations were requested.
BTW, a book is described as a manuscript in excess of 49 pages. 49 pages or less and what you have is a pamphlet.
In the 560 years since the invention of movable type the human race has gone from less than 1% of the population being literate to 90% of the population being literate (99.2% of the developed world).
Heck, since 1970 world literacy has been cut in half!
And that my friends is remarkable.
Still, there are people who cannot or will not read simple instructions, such as "Slow Traffic Keep Right."
And that right there is terrible.
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