A friend told me about how there was a brief moment in the bronze age where in one society the literacy rate went to nearly 100% in a 200 year period.

It led to exponential growth in knowledge creation and transfer.

Everyone could talk with everyone all the time, even when they weren't physically close, because writing/reading allows broadcasts of information in time and space in a way that live discussions (before recording media) can't.

The idea cauldron, the particle collider of ideas, was able to run faster.