I always find it interesting to dig into the problems pioneers in a field thought they were solving. So too with the origins of NoSQL and non-relational databases. This excerpt is a taster.

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I know that, for many, our age is attempting to flee SQL […] But truly to escape SQL involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from it. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which SQL, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against SQL, of that which remains SQL. We have to determine the extent to which our NoSQL is possibly one of its tricks directed against us, at the end of which it stands, motionless, waiting for us.

Mike Foucault, CTO of blurple.com, “Agile Eventual Web Transactions In MongoDB”, NoSQL Now! Conference, 2015

The whole talk is worth digging up.