Kurlansky argues the 'technological fallacy' is the belief that new technology drives social change; instead, societies develop a need and desire first, and technology arises to serve it. Paper did not create the demand for writing and record-keeping; expanding bureaucracy, commerce and literacy created the demand that paper then met.
Chinese court official Cai Lun is credited around 105 CE with reporting a papermaking process to the Han emperor, pulping bark, hemp, rags and fishing nets into sheets. Kurlansky notes paper fragments predate Cai Lun by centuries, so he was likely an improver or publicizer whom history mythologized into a sole inventor.
Paper is a technology for recording and storing information, not for the thinking or communicating itself; speech and thought precede it and would continue without it. This reframes paper as one changeable carrier among many rather than as essential to human expression.
Kurlansky observes that predicted replacements rarely fully displace prior media: print did not end handwriting and screens have not ended paper. Each new medium adds a layer and shifts the older one's role, so the useful question is what function each form keeps rather than which one wins.