Another way to look at it is that from an evolutionary timeline standpoint, we’re a bunch of hairless ground apes quite recently spending most of our time living in caves in groups of maybe 150. We’ve been, in an evolutionary blink of an eye, propelled rapidly into a horribly-different environment, and still trying to get by on our cave-dwelling adaptations. And in that context, perhaps we’re doing quite well.
It has been observed that if the last 50,000 years of man’s existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately sixty-two years each, there have been about 800 such lifetimes. Of these 800, fully 650 were spent in caves. Only during the last seventy lifetimes has it been possible to communicate effectively from one lifetime to another—as writing made it possible to do. Only during the last six lifetimes did masses of men ever see a printed word. Only during the last four has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Only in the last two has anyone anywhere used an electric motor. And the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we use in daily life today have been developed within the present, the 800th, lifetime.
Well, that’s the glass-is-half-empty view.
Another way to look at it is that from an evolutionary timeline standpoint, we’re a bunch of hairless ground apes quite recently spending most of our time living in caves in groups of maybe 150. We’ve been, in an evolutionary blink of an eye, propelled rapidly into a horribly-different environment, and still trying to get by on our cave-dwelling adaptations. And in that context, perhaps we’re doing quite well.
– Future Shock, Alvin Toffler, 1970