Albertine Gaur's _A History of Writing_

Gaur explains that up until the last thirty
or so years, people who study the history of writing
have done so through a Platonic lens; that is,
these scholors have priveleged oral language
over written and have studied writing
as a by product of speech.

"If the aim of writing is the reproduction of language
then the most satisfactory, and by implication the most advanced,
form of writing,[sic] is the one which reproduces language most accurately, in the most economic manner--which inevitably leads to the alphabet" (Preface).

Gaur takes issue with this notably western preconception
and, instead, begins to reevaluate writing under a different notion:
"All writing is information storage" (14).
He compares early civilization hieroglyphics with today's street signs
and further argues that technology, specifically the process by which
we program our computers, forces us to reconsider the "history" of writing.