My Favorite Technology

Language.

It's what took us from ape to apex. More than fire or the wheel.

In the beginning was the word. Agriculture and the internet bow to language.

It precedes and undergirds all of our many revolutions: French, Communist, Haitian, Industrial—language doesn't care.

Nature cannot keep up with the pace of evolution in our culture. Human civilization, with all its good and bad, began when one monkey grunted at another and was understood. This happened millennia before writing or the printing press or the time machine of Nvidia.

Language gives voice to ideas.

And here's the big question: did we actively invent all these wonderful things, or were they merely discovered?