The Fabric of Reality: Towards a Theory of Everything (Penguin Science)

by David Deutsch

The earliest inventions for harnessing nature were tools powered by human muscles. They revolutionized our ancestors’ situation, but they suffered from the limitation that they required continuous human attention and effort during every moment of their use. Subsequent technology overcame that limitation: human beings managed to domesticate certain animals and plants, turning the biological adaptations in those organisms to human ends. Thus the crops could grow, and the guard dogs could watch, even while their owners slept. Another new type of technology began when human beings went beyond merely exploiting existing adaptations (and existing non-biological phenomena such as fire), and created completely new adaptations in the world, in the form of pottery, bricks, wheels, metal artefacts and machines. To do this they had to think about, and understand, the natural laws governing the world – including, as I have explained, not only its superficial aspects but the underlying fabric of reality. There followed thousands of years of progress in this type of technology – harnessing some of the materials, forces and energies of physics. In the twentieth century information was added to this list when the invention of computers allowed complex information processing to be performed outside human brains.

The history of technology, progress and mankind in few words.