What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly Read Free Book Online Page A

transmit knowledge—and knowledge of tool using—over time. Grandparents are the conduits of culture, and without them culture stagnates.
    Imagine a society that not only lacked grandparents but also lacked language—as the pre-Sapiens did. How would learning be transmitted over generations? Your own parents would die before you were an adult, and in any case, they could not communicate to you anything beyond what they could show you while you were immature. You would certainly not learn anything from anyone outside your immediate circle of peers. Innovation and cultural learning would cease to flow.
    Language upended this tight constriction by enabling ideas both to coalesce and to be communicated. An innovation could be hatched and then spread across generations via children. Sapiens gained better hunting tools (such as thrown spears, which permitted a lightweight human to kill a huge, dangerous animal from a safe distance), better fishing tools (barbed hooks and traps), and better cooking methods (using hot stones not just to cook meat but also to extract more calories from wild plants). And they gained all these within only 100 generations of beginning to use language. Better tools meant better nutrition, which could assist in faster evolution.
    The primary long-term consequence of this slightly better nutrition was a steady increase in longevity. Anthropologist Rachel Caspari studied the dental fossils of 768 hominin individuals in Europe, Asia, and Africa, dated from 5 million years ago until the great leap. She determined that a “dramatic increase in longevity in the modern humans” began about 50,000 years ago. Increasing longevity allowed grandparenting, creating what is called the grandmother effect: In a virtuous circle, via the communication of grandparents, ever more powerful innovations carried forward were able to lengthen life spans further, which allowed more time to invent new tools, which increased population. Not only that: Increased longevity “provide[d] a selective advantage promoting further population increase,” because a higher density of humans increased the rate and influence of innovations, which contributed to increased populations. Caspari claims that the most fundamental biological factor that underlies the behavioral innovations of modernity may be the increase in adult survivorship. It is no coincidence that increased longevity is the most measurable consequence of the acquisition of technology. It is also the most consequential.
    By 15,000 years ago, as the world was warming and its global ice caps retreating, bands of Sapiens expanded their population and tool kits, hand in hand. Sapiens used 40 kinds of tools, including anvils, pottery, and composites—complicated spears or cutters made from multiple pieces, such as many tiny flint shards and a handle. While still primarily a hunter-gatherer, Sapiens also dabbled in sedentism, returning to care for favorite food areas, and developed specialized tools for different types of ecosystems. We know from burial sites in the northern latitudes at this same time that clothing also evolved from the general (a rough tunic) to specialized items such as a cap, a shirt, a jacket, trousers, and moccasins. Henceforth human tools would become ever more specialized.
    The variety of Sapiens tribes exploded as they adapted into diverse watersheds and biomes. Their new tools reflected the specifics of their homes; river inhabitants had many nets, steppe hunters many kinds of points, forest dwellers many types of traps. Their languages and looks were diverging.
    Yet they shared many qualities. Most hunter-gatherers clustered into family clans that averaged about 25 related people. Clans would gather in larger tribes of several hundred at seasonal feasts or camping grounds. One function of the tribes was to keep genes moving through intermarriage. Population was spread thinly. The average density of a tribe was less than .01