4000 - 1000 B.C. 4th millennium B.C. In Sumer writing is invented. Writing and calculating came into being at about the same time. The first pictographs carved into clay tablets were used for administrative purposes. As an instrument for the administrative bodies of early empires, which began to rely on the collection, storage, processing and transmission of data, the skill of writing was restricted to only very few. Being more or less separated tasks, writing and calculating converge in today's computers. Letters are invented so that we might be able to converse even with the absent, says Saint Augustine. The invention of writing made it possible to transmit and store information. No longer the ear predominates; face-to-face communication becomes more and more obsolete for administration and bureaucracy. Standardization and centralization become the constituents of high culture and vast empires as Sumer and China. 3200 B.C. In Sumer the seal is invented. About 3000 B.C. In Egypt papyrus scrolls and hieroglyphs are used. About 1350 B.C. In Assyria the cuneiform script is invented. 1200 B.C. According to Aeschylus, the conquest of the town of Troy was transmitted via torch signals. About 1100 B.C. Egyptians use homing pigeons to deliver military information.

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Machine vision A branch of artificial intelligence and image processing concerned with the identification of graphic patterns or images that involves both cognition and abstraction. In such a system, a device linked to a computer scans, senses, and transforms images into digital patterns, which in turn are compared with patterns stored in the computer's memory. The computer processes the incoming patterns in rapid succession, isolating relevant features, filtering out unwanted signals, and adding to its memory new patterns that deviate beyond a specified threshold from the old and are thus perceived as new entities.

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