The world today is built upon a nearly incomprehensible amount of knowledge that has actually been passed 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 ever been written (or the good ones at the very 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 vast bulk of people were not able to read, but for the huge bulk of history the vast bulk of individuals could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the development of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that altered that, making books much more available. Naturally, it was still only really the wealthiest and well-educated that could read or write, however it made it possible for a whole host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread out across great distances. Consider what would have happened if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been distributed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are lucky to be able to merely log onto a website like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and easily gain access to the totality of human knowledge.
It is necessary to bear in mind that, although plenty of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered as ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of humanity's literary history, we did not compose much fiction at all. Many stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, just because the large majority of individuals could not read, suggesting that many books were specialised things meant for those few who could comprehend them. After a brief boom throughout the classical era of antiquity, the quantity of literate individuals dropped considerably during the Middle Ages. Books ended up being unusual treasures, with monks fastidiously copying out the enduring classic texts by hand so as to preserve them, as they were a few of the only members of the populace who were able to read or write. They were the specialist keepers of understanding like biology and religion that all of us have access to in the modern world.