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Down through history, toolmakers and technologists played
arguably one of the most critical roles in advancing the human
species from the Stone Age to the Space Age. We've gone from
throwing rocks to launching rockets to Mars in about 7 million
years; the estimated date human history began. This is pretty
impressive when compared to the 165 millions years the dinosaurs
had to roam the earth, and they never came close to inventing
even the simplest stone tools, let alone space shuttles and the
Internet.
How we got here is not an easy question to answer, but scientists
are pretty sure that technology savvy humans played a key role.
Archaeologists estimate that the earliest humans (Homo habilis)
stood upright 4 million years ago. Then came Home erectus around
2.5 millions years ago, who had a brain half the size of modern
humans. About the same time our distant cousins, Homo sapiens,
started chipping the first stone tools. Between 130,000 and 40,000
years ago, Homo neanderthalensis arrived as the next innovation
of human beings. They had brains slightly bigger than our own,
and were the first humans to leave behind evidence of burying
their dead and caring for the sick. According to Jared Diamond,
evolutionary biologist, human history took a "Great Leap
Forward" around 50,000 years ago. While digging through
Neanderthal trash dumps, archaeologists found standardized stone
tools, jewelry, fishhooks, engraving tools and awes, needles,
harpoons, spear-throwers, bows and arrows, cave paintings, statues,
and musical instruments. Diamond states, "some momentous
change took place in our ancestors' capabilities between about
100,000 and 50,000 years ago." Scientists are getting a
clearer picture of what might have triggered this great leap.
We know through the science of biology that humans have among
the biggest brains of all earthly species. Given our current
talents, we can extrapolate that early humans had the ability
to plan into the future, and use imagination to invent new ways
of doing things. But are a supercomputer brain and a finely engineered
grasping hand, given enough time to experiment, all it took to
get us here? Yes and no, that is, something in addition to our
genetic intelligence helped get this far. What could've prompted
early humans into the innovation frenzy that lead to the modern
world?
What happens when you mix scare resources; the human genes
to create mutually beneficial relationships, i.e., "win-win"
instincts; genes to compete for those scarce resources, "win-lose"
instincts; with technological ingenuity and let it bake for 5
millennia? Society and culture. Evidently, the innate human drive
to pursue social status, to elevate social standing, really got
human evolution rolling. Social biologist Robert Wright states,
"We all relentlessly, if often unconsciously, try to raise
our standing by impressing peers. We especially value the friendship
of high-status people (since alliance with the powerful tends
to come in handy)." Wright is arguing that organized human
culture was launched, rather unintentionally, in part due to
status seeking (a win-lose instinct). This "asocial"
or self-centered instinct worked in mysterious ways to create
interdependent relationships (win-win), which in payoff increased
everyone's chances of survival. For example, when someone invented
a better hunting technology, motivated by the promise of a higher
social standing, the whole family got more to eat. With several
families working together, sharing resources in hard times, the
whole groups' ability to adapt to harsh circumstances was improved.
With this simple insight, humans gradually pushed social organization
from the family unit to a more complexly organized "tribal"
culture.
Stealthily, the human win-lose instinct kept pushing our hunter-gatherer
ancestors toward more and more complex social organization; they
didn't stop at the tribe, chiefdom, or city-state. So as the
social evolutionary story goes, one of the keys to our ancestors'
survival was to keep the "Bigman," or that guy at the
top of the hierarchy in his or her favor. The more powerful your
friends, the more food and resources you had access to. Can you
guess who had the best advantage at impressing their peers and
attracting powerful friends? You got it--the technology innovators.
Wright proposes, "The ongoing quest for social status is
a great spur to cultural innovation. We don't know who invented
the rabbit net, but we can safely assume it didn't hurt his or
her popularity. One sure way to elevate your standing is to create
something that is widely adopted and praised." From the
beginning, human beings have been inventing technologies that
made daily life easier, where each invention also acted to further
reinforce the benefits of cooperating. With the survival advantages
of win-win behavior, the tribe shifted the brunt of the competitive
instinct toward combating common enemies, wisely so, since civil
war tended to make daily life pretty dangerous. Unwittingly,
the interplay of human altruistic and competitive instincts drove
human ingenuity to invent technologies. In turn, technology fostered
something equally worthwhile--communication.
Getting to today's world wasn't as easy as it sounds, nor
did humans particularly do it for altruistic reasons. There was
a lot of suffering, warring, and human exploitation along the
way. Although humans are born to be deeply cooperative, our deeply
competitive instincts usually take over when resources are scarce.
Yet, we learned that by banning together, everyday life got a
little easier. Here in lies the paradox of human nature; we are
driven to play both "win-win" and "win-lose"
games. Unfortunately for our ancestors, win-lose was the predominant
game, well into the 20th Century. Ironically, history's win-lose
games actually benefited mankind in the long run, today's world
is increasingly more cooperative. It seems nature had a secret
plan--if there were no win-lose instinct to create social friction,
likely humans would not have been as driven to innovate. Should
we appreciate the "selfish" side of human nature for
prompting our inventiveness? On the whole, the answer seems to
be a big YES.
As cultural evolution continued, tribal chiefs realized that
in order to stay at the top they had to share resources, if they
didn't they would soon be replaced with someone more generous.
The big lesson revealed in human history is that by exploiting
others, we eventually learned that we're all in the same boat
together. Both the winner and the loser suffer casualties, and
both had to struggle for survival. Rather than keep beating each
other up, it was clear that win-win games produced longer lasting
payoffs. For example, you would quickly lose friends if you didn't
share your success and power. The chief wouldn't remain the "Bigman"
if the tribe felt cheated. In another example, if I have a successful
hunt, and share my surplus with the next door neighbor who didn't,
I have an insurance policy for when I have bad times. Taking
this to a larger social level, the next time an outside intruder
comes by, we now have the "social" fabric to ban together
and fight off a common foe. Working together, fighting together,
early humans were benefiting by "communicating" information.
The act of warring with other people, a win-lose game, has
steadily edged the whole planet toward more "global"
win-win relationships. The winner of the battle usually realizes
that in terms of human life, nobody really wins. In the long-term,
both sides come out ahead by building new agreements to keep
the peace. For example, after WWII, the United States helped
to rebuild Germany and Japan. Just 50 years later we've established
highly interdependent relationships. Can you imagine what the
world would look like today if we had stayed enemies? War has
clandestinely served as an information "technology."
When diverse human cultures clashed, then mixed, the seeds for
an information revolution were planted.
The syncopated dance between the human instinct to pursue
status (asocial qualities), and cooperate (social qualities),
operated as a constant back beat to the human song of invention.
Put a critical mass of people together, add culture and tools,
and magic happens. When tribes gave way to a larger social structure,
the agrarian chiefdom, another great leap occurred. What's the
first thing that you run out of if you put lots of people together
in a small geographic area? Food. Some cultural evolutionists
consider the first "information revolution" to be farming.
But what does food got to do with information, you might ask?
Well, agrarian cultures made it possible to support a larger
group of people in close quarters. Suddenly, the costs of transmitting
information, i.e. new ideas, dropped way down. Yes, farming was
largely an energy technology; putting food on the table was of
prime importance. But, it also brought a whole new level of communication
into being. In order to harness farming technology, a more complex
"information processing" had to take place to run the
daily workings of an agrarian economy. Humming along, a densely
packed group of talented humans, communicating like never before,
is what Wright calls an "invisible brain." Like densely
packed neurons, humans living close together were a smarter information
processing system. Once this first invisible brain was born,
the frequency of innovative technological inventions (as well
as better ideas on how to govern) has been on an exponential
climb to the modern world.
In order for larger social structures to operate effectively,
i.e., the city-state polity, another leap in information technology
had to happen--writing. In times when most societies
were non-literate, the adage "knowledge is power" has
more meaning. Writing lead to more efficient ways of spreading
information, which began the movement of empowering the downtrodden
masses. Robert Wright elaborates, "The informal justice
system of a chiefdom just wouldn't do now that daily life involved
so many close encounters with people who were neither relatives
nor acquaintances. So the government had to build a new anti-cheating
technology, (writing down laws)--a new technology of trust--trust
not just in economic justice, but in the larger social
contract, the mutual nonaggression pact that, by relieving people
of fear and suspicion, smoothes all kinds of cooperative efforts.
Interestingly, money, another information technology,
acted as a catalyst for cultural evolution. With invention of
coins, money in your pocket (as opposed to an ox) gave you consumer
power, "empowered" you to satisfy your wants, and simultaneously
made you a key player in expanding the supply and demand economy.
Once people started participating in trade, making themselves
integral part of the marketplace, it got harder for the elite
few to get away with exploiting the poor majority. Again, when
we're all in the same boat (benefiting from a growing economy)
it makes more sense to be egalitarian.
Today's global society, equipped with democratic international
organizations like the WTO, IMF, and United Nations, is a testament
to what humans are capable of when given access to free flowing
information. The more we humans are exposed to the wider world
around us, the more we seem to get along. As an information technologist
today, you are standing on the shoulders of all the innovators
before you. Their cumulative efforts, over thousands of years,
brought us extraordinary physical technologies (the Internet),
and social technologies (Democracy) well beyond Neanderthal man's
wildest dreams. My hat's off to you! If you're asking, "How
can I make the world a better place?" remember--we're all
in the same boat. If you're listening to your instincts, you're
bound to dream up something that we'll all enjoy.
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