infosyswiki

A scrollytelling visual history of computing, from the abacus to the LLM.

It starts far: the solar system, seen from above, its orbits drawn thin. You scroll, and the camera falls toward the third planet, toward the Earth at night with its borders traced in copper, toward Africa, then follows a route from the Great Lakes up the Rift and the Red Sea to Mesopotamia — and there, over the two rivers, a hand. Twelve phalanges. The thumb counts. Base twelve was born from a gesture, long before writing, long before the digit.

Then chapter one begins, on black: the body as first computer. The need to count did not fall from the sky; it came from time passing, from grain to store, from herds to count. Before the tool, there was the hand.

The chapters that follow will go on from there — clay tokens, the abacus, the loom, the machines — each one arrived at by the same scroll, the picture carrying the reader to the place and the time before the text speaks. The name is provisional.