Technology’s Evolution Was Messy

Welike to think there’s been one nice, continuous, linear direction in the development of technologies. We turned silica stone into an axe and then it was all one long train of events to when we turned silica stone into microchips. It wasn’t at all that way. It was in fact, quite messy, with lots of fits and starts. Sometimes technologies would just be lost. Whoever invented it had a heart attack before it was finished and no one else came along and re-invented whatever that idea was. We’ve just discovered technology made by our non Homo sapiens ancestors that are <a href="https://gilescrouch.medium.com/I%E2%80%99ve%20attached%20a%20draft%20of%20a%202-pager.%20After%20a%20summer%20of%20reflection,%20coaching%20advice%20and%20deep%20learning,%20my%20idea%20is%20to%20be%20an%20innovation%20agency%20for%20small%20&%20medium%20sized%20businesses%20in%20Atlantic%20Canada.%20Brings%20together%20my%20anthropology,%20marketing%20and%20research%20along%20with%20entrepreneurship%20into%20what%20I%20think,%20is%20an%20ideal%20business%20model.%20%20There%E2%80%99s%20a%20big%20gap.%20Small%20businesses%20need%20to%20innovate,%20but%20all%20the%20frameworks%20are%20designed%20for%20big%20business%20with%20big%20budgets%20and%20timelines.%20Small%20businesses%20don%E2%80%99t%20have%20those%20luxuries.%20%20I%E2%80%99d%20really%20appreciate%20and%20value%20your%20feedback%20with%20your%20knowledge%20and%20experience,%20especially%20with%20strategy%20and%20marketing.%20%20Be%20as%20critical%20as%20you%20like,%20feedback%20is%20so%20helpful!%20%20Cheers!%20G." rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">little balls</a>. Unless we invent a time machine, we will never know why or what they were used for. The tool exists, the context is gone. We like to think agriculture and all its related tools happened one day when we got tired of bashing around the woods fighting the bears for berries. It took several thousands of years and some cultures decided they rather enjoyed fighting the bears rather than growing the berries and abandoned the use of agriculture. They didn’t have social media to entertain them back then. Prior to now, because we were widely geographically separated, with different languages, traditions and all the elements that make up culture and our societies, we rejected technology from another culture as often as we accepted it. When we do accept a technology innovation from another culture the accepting culture more than likely made innovations on that technology that suited their cultural norms. Then, perhaps decades, centuries, or thousands of years later, they passed that technology on to another culture as a gift or because they lost the war or underwent cultural convergence. And so on it went this way and that, meandering around the world, sometimes reinvented and other times a few humans had the same idea at the same time. There’s even some suggestion that us Homo sapiens may have adopted fire and <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn15048-proto-humans-mastered-fire-790000-years-ago/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">other technologie</a>s from non human ancestors like Neanderthals or Denisovans. We can be a sneaky bunch at times. <a href="https://gilescrouch.medium.com/technologys-evolution-was-messy-e9cc349316b1">Read More</a>