2min chapter

Long Now: Seminars About Long-term Thinking cover image

Ryan North: How to Invent Everything

Long Now: Seminars About Long-term Thinking

CHAPTER

What Does Language Do for You?

Humans first have skeletons, anatomy that looks identical to ours. But 150,000 years later we start getting behaviorally modern humans. These are humans who are acting like us and doing things intrinsically human. So the question is what changed? There's a lot of theories about it but one that I think is really compelling is that we started talking to each other. And language may seem like a weird thing for an invention because it feels innate, it feels like we kind of get it for free. It doesn't feel like a technology, but it is something that humans invented for themselves. And like any technology, it can be lost.

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