Technically speaking, an “attractor” is a pattern or equilibrium that under certain conditions is very likely to emerge and stabilize within a dynamical system, such as a society. We went from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculture—in Eurasia and the pre-Columbian Americas separately—because agriculture was an attractor. We electrified the world, because electricity was an attractor. We all started using interconnected computers, because digitization was an attractor.
