What enables us to shape new worlds?
The essence of innovation is not creativity per se, but the recognition that something has future utility.
Our many innovations—from turning silica stone into handaxes to turning it into computer chips—have undoubtedly been critical to the human story. Enabling such innovations is our distinct ability to think about the future and especially to recognize potential. This is no easy feat as many baffling examples in history show.Consider the Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria, who described a steam engine in the first century AD but seems to have used it only to entertain guests at parties.
So foresight has clearly accelerated cultural evolution. In turn, cultural evolution leads to improved foresight, creating a potent feedback loop that has paved the way to increasing human dominance on the planet—and all the new problems that entailed. Let’s look at an example of this feedback loop in action.
After the last ice age, people in the Levant began to abandon a hunter-gatherer life in favor of a sedentary agricultural existence that raised some novel challenges, including the collection and distribution of grains, meat, and other goods through trade and taxes. They needed a way to keep track of who owed what to whom and when it was due. An innovative solution was the use of clay tokens of different shapes, such as cones and cylinders, to stand for measures of grain or livestock.
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