Paul Cooper at Literary Hub:
One Sumerian epic poem called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta gives the first known story about the invention of writing, by a king who has to send so many messages that his messenger can’t remember them all.
His speech was substantial, and its contents extensive… Because the messenger, whose mouth was tired, was not able to repeat it, the lord of Kulaba patted some clay and wrote the message as if on a tablet. Formerly, the writing of messages on clay was not established. Now, under that sun and on that day, it was indeed so.
The Sumerians had two things in virtually limitless abundance: the clay beneath their feet, and the reeds that grew on the marshes and riverbanks—and these combined to create the written word. They made marks on palm-sized tablets of wet clay with the ends of cut reeds, and the distinctive shape of these impressions gives this form of writing its name, from the Latin for “wedge-shaped”: cuneiform. The oldest cuneiform clay tablets come from the Sumerian city of Uruk, and date to the late fourth millennium BCE. They are ergonomically shaped to the human and, and as a result are roughly the dimensions of a modern smartphone.
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Today, researchers are looking toward building quantum computers and ways to securely transfer information using an entirely new sister field called 
I first came to the United States for an academic exchange at Columbia University in 2005, and have spent the bulk of my time here since starting my PhD at Harvard University in 2007. No country changes nature overnight, and America still retains many of the virtues with which I fell in love all those years ago. But there are days when I fear that the place has been transformed so deeply that the qualities that would once have been touted as quintessentially American have forever been lost.
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