Ebook: Unbound: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink

"Synthesizing the findings of primatology, paleontology, archeology, history, and anthropology, Richard Currier reinterprets and retells the modern narrative of human evolution that began with the discovery of Lucy and other Australopithecus fossils. But the same forces that allowed us to integrate technology into every aspect of our daily lives have also brought us to the brink of planetary catastrophe. Unbound explains both how we got here and how human society must be transformed again to achieve a sustainable future"--;"Human life has been repeatedly transformed by certain key technologies, each of which has triggered a profound metamorphosis. The fabrication of weapons, the mastery of fire, and the technologies of clothing and shelter transformed the human body, enabling us to walk upright, shed our body hair, and migrate out of tropical Africa into temperate climates. Symbolic communication changed human evolution from a slow biological process into a fast cultural process. Food production transformed the relationship between humanity and the environment, and with technologies of interaction led to the birth of civilization. Precision machinery, developed to build accurate clocks, spawned the industrial revolution and the rise of nation-states; and in the next metamorphosis, the rise of digital technologies may well lead to the birth of a global civilization. Synthesizing the findings of primatology, paleontology, archeology, history, and anthropology, Richard Currier reinterprets and retells the modern narrative of human evolution that began with the discovery of Lucy and other Australopithecus fossils. But the same forces that allowed us to integrate technology into every aspect of our daily lives have also brought us to the brink of planetary catastrophe. Unbound explains both how we got here and how human society must be transformed again to achieve a sustainable future."--;The primate baseline: tools, traditions, motherhood, warfare and the homeland -- The technology of spears and digging sticks: upright posture and bipedal locomotion -- The technology of fire: cooking, nakedness, and staying up late -- The technology of clothing and shelter: hats, huts, togas and tents -- The technology of symbolic communication: music, art, language, and ethnicity -- The technology of agriculture: permanent villages and accumulation of wealth -- The technology of interation: ships, writing, the wheel, and the birth of civilization -- The technology of precision machinery: clocks, engines, and industrial society -- The technology of digital information: the world wide web of human interaction -- Our world at the brink: is humanity drifting toward a planetary catastrophe?