Back in 2004 when I wrote Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them, I cited Steven Den Beste’s piece The Four Most Important Inventions in Human History:
In my opinion, the four most important inventions in human history are spoken language, writing, movable type printing and digital electronic information processing (computers and networks). Each represented a massive improvement in our ability to distribute information and to preserve it for later use, and this is the foundation of all other human knowledge activities. There are many other inventions which can be cited as being important (agriculture, boats, metal, money, ceramic pottery, postmodernist literary theory) but those have less pervasive overall effects.
I still think he was correct.
Thanks to David Whitewolf at Random Nuclear Strikes, I listened to what I think is a critically important speech given by Juan Enriquez just a couple of weeks ago at the 2013 Fiscal Summit presented by the Peterson Foundation.
It’s twenty-five minutes long, but well worth your time, I think.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpUV4BRqkf0?rel=0]
Change continues, and it’s still accelerating.
If we don’t go off the cliff first.