UNBOUND:  

How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, 

Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink

      

     Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.

      The fabrication of weapons, the mastery of fire, and the technologies of clothing and shelter radically restructured the human body, enabling us to walk upright, shed our body hair, and migrate out of tropical Africa. Symbolic communication transformed human evolution from a slow biological process into a fast cultural process. The invention of agriculture revolutionized the relationship between humanity and the environment, and the technologies of interaction led to the birth of civilization. Precision machinery spawned the industrial revolution and the rise of nation-states; and in the next metamorphosis, digital technologies may well unite all of humanity for the benefit of future generations.     Read more...

UNNATURAL: 

How Modern Society is

Destroying Human Happiness

      Although the people of the contemporary world enjoy unprecedented personal wealth, abundant food, the most effective medical care in human history, and the longest average life-spans ever recorded, they remain surprisingly unhappy. Study after study by researchers from numerous scientific disciplines shows that the lives of contemporary people are filled with chronic stress, anxiety, depression,  and loneliness at levels that have rarely been reported for any human society.

Seeking relief from their psychological torments, modern people have turned for comfort to drugs, foods, and electronic communications. But their addictive consumption of these products has only compounded the problem. Now, in addition to their psychological suffering, their gross overconsumption of foods, drugs, and electronic communications has produced an epidemic of physical and mental health problems severe enough to become life-threatening.   

Why have the triumphs of modern technology seemingly led to the reduction of human happiness? UNNATURAL is an attempt to explain the origins and nature of this apparent paradox.  Read more...