Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex | Video on TED.com
If you can get past the attention grabbing title, this is actually a very interesting lecture. The premise is a simple one; communication, sharing, support are the reason why humans have evolved. Enlightened self interest. Stunning thought, there isn't a single person on the planet that knows how to make a pencil! Mining the graphite, harvesting the wood, manufacturing the tools to make it are all skills held by many people collectively but not in a single mind.
Fascinating stuff - particularly the point that the more people there are, the more scope there is for trade and the more prosperous as a whole we are. Interesting to wonder whether that will continue to be sufficient to dig us out of the hole that an expanding (and increasingly consumptive) population is creating on a planet of finite resources...
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