Influx

Here’s a brilliant talk from author Matt Ridley at TED Oxford about the power of collaboration and exchange to create ideas.

Matt suggests that recent human progress is down to the combination of multiple ideas or ideas having sex using the biological metaphor.

Matt highlights the significant shift from making things for ourselves like simple tools, to today’s computer mouse, where millions of people are all making things for us.

This happened when human beings started to exchange between groups which happened around 100,000 years ago- people were trading before they were farming.

He quotes from the economist Leonard Reed, that no one knows how to make complete things anymore, we’ve gone beyond the capacity of individuals and it’s now all about the collective brain.

Technological progress is coming from the exchange, meeting and mating of ideas which is such a powerful force that it will conquer many of the major challenges that lie ahead.

Posted by Ed Cotton