What to Expect When You're Expecting… Technology Part 2
In Part 1, we explored how the constant discovery and use of technology allowed our ancestors to carve a niche among early apes that would eventually bloom into humankind. We left our story with the advent of general-purpose computers, you can read the entire post here.
To better understand the world of modern computers and its impact on how you manage your nonprofit or small business, we need to divert into two seemly unrelated topics: trade and information.
Trade winds and stars
As is the case with technology, trade was part of our pre-human society. Most of the groups were self-sufficient, probably only trading when convenient. Until the introduction of precious metals, bartering for goods and services was the main trading activity of prehistoric groups crossing each others’ paths. Obsidian, flint, shells, semi-precious stones, and dry edibles were probably some of the first goods bartered.
Trade flourished amid agricultural societies of the ancient world. Especially among the Yangtze Valley, Mesopotamia, Nile River Valley, and the Indus Valley civilizations. Over time, ancient local trade routes were aggregated into pan territorial routes as overland commerce became essential to Africa, Eurasia, and maritime routes of the Mediterranean and Southeast Asia people. As population and wealth grew, Eurasian commerce eventually gave way to the Steppe Route. The need for exotic goods among wealthy citizens inspired traders to venture ever deeper outside the boundaries of their own territories.
Ever growing demand for exotic goods expanded the Steppe Route into existing trade routes in Africa and Southeast Asia. The Silk Road, as this trade network was known, was a constellation of overland and maritime trade routes that connected Northern Europe and Western Africa with civilizations as far as Java and Japan. More than trading luxury goods for the mega-wealthy, the true contribution of the Silk Road to humankind was the exchange of ideas, knowledge, genetic material, music, disease, and technology. The building blocks of how you manage your organization and interact with the economic forces of our own contemporary societies were developed during the halcyon days of the Silk Road.
Trading along the Silk Road was a massive endeavor. For those whose territories touched by this vast trade network, the wealth it generated was sacrosanct to monarchs and peasants alike. The Silk Road was the first global information superhighway; it encompassed master artisans and their workers producing trade goods, a network of watering stations to supply caravans, as well as religious and entertainment services. Innovations such as paper currency, banking, promissory notes, and record keeping were heavily leveraged to make the Silk Road more efficient, secure, profitable, and taxable.
Something from nothing
In order to keep up with an increased rate of trade, merchants eventually accepted standardized commodities as currency. Different commodities at different times have served as standardized payment vehicles for traded goods and services. Trade generates wealth, and rulers wanted their share. With profits came the need to measure how much to keep, and how much to pay.
Our ancestors have been counting, recording, and recalling stuff since the dawn of humankind. At the very beginning, we probably counted days, and how many animals, carcasses, or berries we identified for dinner, documenting our findings with marks in wood, or cave pictographs.
Most people used their our own digits to count, thus base 5, 10, 15, and 20 systems were born and recognized to this day. As the number of items counted grew, our ancestors developed ways to group numbers and to represent higher volume counts. It wasn’t until the advent of agricultural societies that counting went into high gear, morphing into what we now know as mathematics.
Sharing, ideas, goods, or services, has always been an intrinsic part of being human. Sharing easily evolved into trading, and trading drove early advances in mathematics. Egypt broke fresh ground with the invention of equations some 5,000 years ago; Greece upped the ante by making strides in many areas such as algebra and numerology 600-350 BCE; things got interesting when China invented negative numbers circa 200 BCE; and lastly, Mesoamerica and India invented the zero. With the inclusion of zero into mathematics, ever-growing complex calculations were possible, such as the ones in the field of calculus. Calculus allowed people to break down complex systems into smaller and smaller units approaching zero but cleverly avoiding the trouble of needing to divide by zero. Without zero, there would not be a binary numerical system, the foundation of modern computing programming.
Join us for Part 3, where we’ll talk about the rise of computers in the business world.
To better understand the world of modern computers and its impact on how you manage your nonprofit or small business, we need to divert into two seemly unrelated topics: trade and information.
Trade winds and stars
As is the case with technology, trade was part of our pre-human society. Most of the groups were self-sufficient, probably only trading when convenient. Until the introduction of precious metals, bartering for goods and services was the main trading activity of prehistoric groups crossing each others’ paths. Obsidian, flint, shells, semi-precious stones, and dry edibles were probably some of the first goods bartered.
Trade flourished amid agricultural societies of the ancient world. Especially among the Yangtze Valley, Mesopotamia, Nile River Valley, and the Indus Valley civilizations. Over time, ancient local trade routes were aggregated into pan territorial routes as overland commerce became essential to Africa, Eurasia, and maritime routes of the Mediterranean and Southeast Asia people. As population and wealth grew, Eurasian commerce eventually gave way to the Steppe Route. The need for exotic goods among wealthy citizens inspired traders to venture ever deeper outside the boundaries of their own territories.
Ever growing demand for exotic goods expanded the Steppe Route into existing trade routes in Africa and Southeast Asia. The Silk Road, as this trade network was known, was a constellation of overland and maritime trade routes that connected Northern Europe and Western Africa with civilizations as far as Java and Japan. More than trading luxury goods for the mega-wealthy, the true contribution of the Silk Road to humankind was the exchange of ideas, knowledge, genetic material, music, disease, and technology. The building blocks of how you manage your organization and interact with the economic forces of our own contemporary societies were developed during the halcyon days of the Silk Road.
Trading along the Silk Road was a massive endeavor. For those whose territories touched by this vast trade network, the wealth it generated was sacrosanct to monarchs and peasants alike. The Silk Road was the first global information superhighway; it encompassed master artisans and their workers producing trade goods, a network of watering stations to supply caravans, as well as religious and entertainment services. Innovations such as paper currency, banking, promissory notes, and record keeping were heavily leveraged to make the Silk Road more efficient, secure, profitable, and taxable.
Something from nothing
In order to keep up with an increased rate of trade, merchants eventually accepted standardized commodities as currency. Different commodities at different times have served as standardized payment vehicles for traded goods and services. Trade generates wealth, and rulers wanted their share. With profits came the need to measure how much to keep, and how much to pay.
Our ancestors have been counting, recording, and recalling stuff since the dawn of humankind. At the very beginning, we probably counted days, and how many animals, carcasses, or berries we identified for dinner, documenting our findings with marks in wood, or cave pictographs.
Most people used their our own digits to count, thus base 5, 10, 15, and 20 systems were born and recognized to this day. As the number of items counted grew, our ancestors developed ways to group numbers and to represent higher volume counts. It wasn’t until the advent of agricultural societies that counting went into high gear, morphing into what we now know as mathematics.
Sharing, ideas, goods, or services, has always been an intrinsic part of being human. Sharing easily evolved into trading, and trading drove early advances in mathematics. Egypt broke fresh ground with the invention of equations some 5,000 years ago; Greece upped the ante by making strides in many areas such as algebra and numerology 600-350 BCE; things got interesting when China invented negative numbers circa 200 BCE; and lastly, Mesoamerica and India invented the zero. With the inclusion of zero into mathematics, ever-growing complex calculations were possible, such as the ones in the field of calculus. Calculus allowed people to break down complex systems into smaller and smaller units approaching zero but cleverly avoiding the trouble of needing to divide by zero. Without zero, there would not be a binary numerical system, the foundation of modern computing programming.
Join us for Part 3, where we’ll talk about the rise of computers in the business world.
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