1. Conceptual evolution of documentary languages

The era of the great explorers, the printing press and later the industrial revolution greatly altered the relationship between man and his environment. Distances shortened in the perception of the commonplace, knowledge became democratized, then industrialized, no longer the preserve of an elite of literate copyists responsible for the inscription and transmission of sacred and learned writings, or of charters. The twentieth century brought a number of changes in the relationship between man and the written word, with a desire to structure information and formalize it by anchoring it in inscriptions that could be understood not only by humans, but also by mechanical and then electronic machines, the new players in the industry.

Initially, thinkers from different disciplines theorized about knowledge structuring and indexed access to information, including at a...