
Unbound
How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink
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Narrated by:
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Noah Michael Levine
About this listen
Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.
The fabrication of weapons, the mastery of fire, and the technologies of clothing and shelter radically restructured the human body, enabling us to walk upright, shed our body hair, and migrate out of tropical Africa. Symbolic communication transformed human evolution from a slow biological process into a fast cultural process. The invention of agriculture revolutionized the relationship between humanity and the environment, and the technologies of interaction led to the birth of civilization. Precision machinery spawned the industrial revolution and the rise of nation-states; and in the next metamorphosis, digital technologies may well unite all of humanity for the benefit of future generations.
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.
Technology: "The deliberate modification of any natural object or substance with forethought to achieve a specific end or to serve a specific purpose."
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2015 Richard L. Currier (P)2015 Audible, Inc.In my own 68 years of existence, lifelong learning, experience, observation and understanding, the alarmism of each decade has largely been of insignificance due to the usage of the 'if's, etc. Despite this perpetual repetition I remain a lifelong skeptic and optimist and anti-alarmist.
Tom O'Rourke 1953 ? love always
An exceptional tome.
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Fascinating
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I enjoyed narration, and the subject captured my interest from the first page. I really found the subject, which is a massive one, to be interesting and informative.
Give it a go, you won't be disappointed.
I almost didn't listen to this
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interesting
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Dangerous nonsense from someone far less informed than he first appears.
Bad science
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