Unbound: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human and Brought Our World to the Brink

by Richard L. Currier

anthropologists have defined technology—in its widest and most inclusive sense—as the deliberate modification of any natural object or substance with forethought to achieve a specific end or serve a specific purpose.

Whether our species is capable of a final act of fusion—in which all living people achieve a shared identity as members of a single global culture and civilization—is a question that will determine the future not only of our own species but also of most forms of life on Earth.