2.5 million years ago a very distant ancestor sharpened a rock and tied it to the end of a stick. Nurture starts to beat nature. Big muscles lose to sharp spears. Possessing the spear-making meme makes you dramatically more likely to reproduce and pass on your genes. Those with the capacity to learn spear-making through imitation can provide more food, territory and safety. Memes beget memes as hunting gets easier – there’s more downtime to invent and learn new memes, like weaving baskets, crafting pots, and building huts.
Then 2.4 million years later we learn to talk. Memes spread faster without resorting to pointing and grunting. They’re also copied more accurately, and remembered for longer. Only 58,000 years later we learn to draw, and writing comes 34,000 years after that. Good stories can’t be as easily modified by their narrator. Memes start to live forever: “an eye for an eye” survives to this day because 3,700 years ago it was carved into stone. The invention of the printing press makes copying incredibly cheap. The cycle accelerates.
Radio. TV. The Internet. Each new medium of mass communication decreases the cost of transmission, and increases the fidelity of copying. Memetics is democratized: anyone can create memes and distribute them globally, instantly and effectively for free. The first computer was designed on paper. The second was designed on a computer. We’re “standing on the shoulders of Giants”. By the year 2000 we’re advancing at 5x the average rate of the 20th century. Kurzweil believes the 21st century will progress 1,000 times faster. AR. VR. the Metaverse. Neuralink. It’s not slowing down.
| Name | Link | Type |
|---|---|---|
Flaherty computer | Social | |
Musk words are lossy | Social | |
Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future | Blog | |
Standing on the shoulders of giants | Reference | |
The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence | Blog |