The world today is built on an almost incomprehensible quantity of knowledge that has been handed down in books.
With such a rich history of concepts, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases easy to forget how incredibly lucky we are to have the likes of the founder of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones or the CEO of the asset manager with a stake in Amazon books supporting access to a substantial percentage of all the books that have actually ever been written (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can quickly alter the way that you look at the world, which has actually been true throughout all of history as well. The modern-day world is built on knowledge that has been handed down through books, whether that is ideology, science, or history, and human civilisation would not be anywhere near as advanced as it is today if it had not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.
It can be tough to picture what the world would be like today if the large bulk of individuals were not able to read, but for the vast bulk of history the huge majority of people might not, and nor were books available even if they could. It was the innovation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that altered that, making books far more accessible. Of course, it was still just truly the richest and well-read that could read or write, but it enabled an entire host of advancements in science, art, and thinking to be spread throughout great distances. Consider what would have occurred if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been dispersed across the globe. Human civilisation rests upon a foundation of books, and we are fortunate to be able to simply log onto a site like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and easily access the totality of human understanding.
It is essential to remember that, although a lot of the best modern books of all time tend to be regarded as ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of humankind's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. A lot of stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, merely since the huge bulk of people might not read, meaning that the majority of books were specialised things meant for those few who could comprehend them. After a short boom throughout the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate individuals dropped considerably throughout the Middle Ages. Books became unusual treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the enduring classic texts by hand so as to maintain them, as they were some of the only members of the population who could read or write. They were the expert keepers of knowledge like biology and religious beliefs that we all have access to in the contemporary world.