Dr. Matilda Siebrecht explores the archaeological history of notebooks, beginning with her personal passion for the objects. She traces writing's invention through Plato's Phaedrus dialogue, where an Egyptian king warns that writing will weaken memory rather than strengthen it. The episode examines how writing marked a shift from flexible oral tradition to permanent recorded information, concentrating power among literate elites. Siebrecht connects this to modern anxieties about AI replacing human thinking. She concludes with a scholarly definition of notebooks as tools for recording information for later retrieval, distinct from memory aids.
