What to Expect When You’re Expecting… Technology Part 1

Part one of our new series What to Expect When You’re Expecting… Technology. In this series, we attempt to cover how technology with impact your business in 2018 and beyond.

Technology (from the Greek "science of craft") is a word with a very long tail. If you search online for the word “tech”, pictures of futuristic machines, numbers, 1984, and the like will show up. As time passes, we are increasingly inundated with news about the promises and perils associated with technology. The more we are exposed to it, the more we need to contend with it.

However, technology has been part of humankind since the very beginning. So much so, that when we look for evidence of past civilizations, what we are looking for are the remnants of ancient technology. The use of technology is not exclusive to humans. Other animals have been observed making and using tools, weapons, and even toys. Bonobos, dolphins, mongooses, and crows, are only but a few examples.

We don’t know for sure how powerful, or weak, our ape-like ancestors were. But if they were closer in strength to modern humans, then heavy use of weaponry was our only chance of survival. An incoming attack of stick-wielding apes with murderous intent would light an arms race fire under our ancestors.

The ability to hold our turf in the trees probably accompanied the urge to move to more protected locations, such as caves. Over time, advances in technology allowed our ancestors to develop better weapons and tools. Eventually, Homo Erectus managed to control fire, and everything changed. Fire, as a technology, solidified humans as apex predators.

Fire allowed early humans to modify our environment, to sit around way past sunset, to cook meat and vegetables that would have otherwise been indigestible. New access to nutrients allowed human brains to grow to their full potential; ultimately giving birth to storytelling and culture.

Fast forward some 600,000 years, and modern humans have managed to domesticate plants and animals. With agriculture and farming technologies, production of food increased, giving way to the rise of settlements and cities.

Fast forward some 10,000 years of dealing with diseases, hunger, exploitation, and warfare; and technology has been crowned as the ultimate panacea for humanity’s ill fortunes. Just imagine what humanity managed to accomplish during the 20th century: standardized the production and distribution of electricity at large scale; eradicated diseases that were the bane of humanity for millennia; split the atom; created weapons of mass destruction; implemented heavy use of petrochemicals; mass production of water, land, and space vehicles. And last, but not least, the invention and commercialization of the general-purpose computer. Computers changed everything, again.

Join us for Part 2, where we explore how mathematics, technology, and trade have been around since the dawn of humanity.