Rulers and Writing

First, I am pleased that the scribes used animal skins, as it certainly would annoy their equivalent of PETA people.
Not only does technology determine text, but more importantly, the political climate determines to some extent the technology. As well, such climate determines not only what text is written and how it is written, but also whether there is text after all.
Martin chooses a world that to the dwellers in that place and time is literally falling apart. I originally thought that the barbarians were ignorant and totally ignored the benefits of writing, that the Romans completely lost the knowledge, and that the Monks had to deal with chance discoveries to keep some relic of civilization. I did not realize that Odoacer and the other Germanic leaders saw at the very least that the writing was important to their newly conquered, and that in many instances, the very practice of writing, and not just the parchments and stone, was preserved.
The technology determines the space one can use on medium used, be it parchment or clay. It determines the shape of the symbols used, and forces the writer to consider the difficulty in making the symbols. Outside the text materials, other parts of technology interfere. If there is no way to regulate year-round temperatures, one may not write until the outside temperature increases sufficiently, while with our ability to regulate temperature year-round by controlling the heat in buildings, one can write any day at any time.
One must also consider the logistics necessary to produce the text, including the availability of the materials, gathering the materials to produce it, the costs of doing so, and the needs of the scribes themselves.
Still, the political climate is paramount. In the disintegrating world of the late Roman Empire, the new rulers allowed much to be preserved, especially legal formulas, yet Roman decay meant that the meaning of what was written could be lost over the years, and often did happen. Technology determines the text, abut cannot preserve the meaning thereof. In any case, as we can tell from more recent examples such as the Soviet Union, rulers can impose meaning on the test if they so wish.
Not that rulers always had their way. Martin points at that Cassiodorus could not condemn pagan writers and alienate someone if he wanted to keep his new group of literate monks (122). As more decay occurred, writing was reduced to monasteries, and thus writing from a pagan, Roman point of view transformed into Christian overtones (122-123). The magnitude of the transformation has its vague analogy in a science fiction story in which, because of computers, people lost the ability to perform mathematical calculations in their heads until, during a time of crisis, a technician discovers the lost art, but it now is viewed in the context of a secret weapon for the war effort!
From the Clanchy article, I learned that rulers are primary employers of writers, and can permit the preservation of religious manuscripts, as well as create tax and salary records, but the matter would be for utilitarian purposes, or more directly, what the writers can influence the rulers to cover. I believe I am fighting the notion here that writers write for merely aesthetic reasons, while reality dictates that even then, writers need to earn bread, be they Roman scribes, Irish monks, or Chaucers in their bureaucratic work.