A closer look
Before YouTube tutorials or IKEA manuals, the Romans created public diagrams for daily engineering: open-air walls carved with instructions on plumbing and road angles, so that common workers could repair infrastructure without scholarly training. These were early open-source blueprints, aimed at civic resilience rather than patents. The idea collapsed when higher classes privatized the knowledge, arguing maintenance was beneath citizens. The outcome? Decay. It’s a warning whispering through centuries: when expertise turns into private property, public life literally crumbles.
