Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years--the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing technologies. Once "progress" started to produce new tools, different ways of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over the world, culminating in agriculture, cities, literacy and all the rest. Yet all the ingredients of human success--tool making, big brains, culture, fire, even language--seem to have been in place half a million years before and nothing happened.
The answer lies in a new idea, borrowed from economics, known as collective intelligence: the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural change of a population is the amount of interaction between individuals. Even as it explains very old patterns in prehistory, this idea holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead
The Rational Optimist expounds this theme at length. A summary is: produce narrowly, consume widely.
Surprisingly, it benefits everyone to produce what they are best at and trade for the rest, even when you trade for something that you are better at producing (i.e you are even better at producing something else). Thus, people can optimize locally.
EDIT uh, article is by the same guy. Great book though he gets a bit rabid at the end. There's an especially striking story of skill loss in Tasmanian native Australians, due to being cut off from the mainland and having too small a population for the requisite collection intelligence to maintain those skills (doesn't prove it of course). Just now, I'm reminded of what someone said of MS: because millions of people use it, it's worth it to work on little details - so you can have a menu specialist. IIRC, collective intelligence isn't so much about how many people put their intelligence into it, but how many people need it (i.e. the market). The collectivity comes in in that other people similarly specialize in something else.
I've just finished http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html - it's pretty convincing that money is really what differentiates us from the other primate competing species (like neanderthals).
Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years--the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing technologies. Once "progress" started to produce new tools, different ways of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over the world, culminating in agriculture, cities, literacy and all the rest. Yet all the ingredients of human success--tool making, big brains, culture, fire, even language--seem to have been in place half a million years before and nothing happened.
The answer lies in a new idea, borrowed from economics, known as collective intelligence: the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural change of a population is the amount of interaction between individuals. Even as it explains very old patterns in prehistory, this idea holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead