Symbols provide an improvement upon memory.
Writing symbols evolved to create lists of inventory.
A journal is an improvement upon lists.
An accounting system is an improvement over a journal.
A hierarchical database is just the automation of an accounting system.
A relational database is just an advancement over an accounting system.
A document store with a searchable full text index is an extension of a relational database.
A non-referentially-integral document store with full text index that can calculate results from the properties of indices is an improvement upon the relational database.
A semantic store of relations between meanings (networks of properties reducible to human experience) is an improvement over a document store.
An inferential store of candidate relations (stored as non-euclidian geometric relations) between meanings of properties reducible to human experience is an improvement over a semantic store.
An automated explorer of stimuli(inputs) that attempts to use streams of inputs to test inferred candidate relations between meanings of properties reducible to human experience is an improvement over an inferential store.
An an automated seeker of inferred streams of inputs necessary to test inferred candidate relations between meanings of properties reducible to human experience is an improvement over an automated explorer.
An automated choice of the value of the results of automated seeking of inferred streams of inputs necessary to test inferred candidate relations between meanings of properties reducible to human experience is an improvement over an automated seeker.
An automated judge of the consequences of the choice of values is an improvement over an automatic decision maker.
An automated regulator (policeman) of the judgements of the consequences of …
However, that hierarchy gracefully upgrades and degrades.
We need symbols, lists, journals, accounting systems, hierarchical databases, relational databases, and so on…
But if we work hard enough we come round full circle as the only difference in each of these conditions is the cost of retaining and locating memories.
Where, in that series, we evolved to store the minimum amount of information, searchable at the minimum cost, to do precisely the same thing – but at much smaller scale than the machines that we ask to perform the same task at ever increasing scales.