Regional technology corresponds with regional resources and needs and not only the intellectual quality of their development. Thus the suspicion that those of "lower technology" are living in inferior ways is false. The reverse may actually be true. One needs a throwstick for hunting and a throwing axe for lethal warfare. Which culture is more savage? Boomerangs are not inferior technology compared to bows and arrows, axes, or even firearms, but rather, different and fitting technology for the regions, social situations and survival strategies where they were employed. Inferiority and superiority are questions of human values, not intelligence.

On a higher level I am interested in how theories of technology and human development play into political power and our own future in the 21st century. We are supposedly entering "The Fourth Industrial Revolution" where it is popularly advocated that humans must merge with machines, perhaps to even to continue to survive at all. This "Borg" like mentality is similar to pop theories of past technological development which tend often to assume that there is a development of technology from stone age through to modern with a corresponding development in the human intelligence which drives this. This leads to the naive belief that technology is almost always healthy, and that whatever is novel is best. Thus one would assume that those who throw sticks are stupid compared to those who use smart phones.... I believe the reverse is the case, at least from an epigentic and brain science perspective. Many modern humans couldn't survive without their smart phones, and modern physicists have shown me that they don't well understand boomerang physics.

I propose another theory than this pop one. I'm sure I'm not the first to do this but it seems to me that society exhibits technological development because of the availability and appropriation of the technology of previous generations, as well as the desperate need for that technology through the upheaval and crisis endured within various regions and times. Fixed field agriculture is labor intensive and had major drawbacks to health and lifestyle which generally kept hunter/gatherers from utilizing it at scale for most crops, despite their ability to do so. It's larger scale usage, particularly with grains, corresponds with the rise of coercive states which required this for tax purposes and to feed armies who's role was to enforce coercion and slavery.

We are standing on the shoulders of those who came before and the life and death struggle for survival that they endured through turbulent ages. The social changes which lead to technological development are created primarily by conflict, not harmony, and so we are often best served by maintaining the instinct that all technology is a weapon and all societies which develop it are reflecting a history of instability, coercion and struggle. Those who don't get along well with others are the most proficient warriors and those which survived as hunter/gatherer were those which could and thus felt no need to survive through other more labor intensive means. This is a testimony of regional harmony and achievement, not stupidity.

In our world very few hunter/gatherers remain and those which do are hunted and murdered so that the rain forest can be leveled.,,, Perhaps this says something about the world we live in and how we might reflect upon our species and our age?

There's a quote from T.S. Eliot I like. "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" I think this quote could be extended to include the phenomenon of information overload, disinformation, and then finally the technology of brain hacking and the loss of control of the ability to individually process information whatsoever.

All this from a flying stick...? Well they say that it's bad for a currency when it loses its penny because the penny roots the currency down to proportion and scale with goods. Same thing with an advanced species when it loses its first survival tools. These things keep us remembering our proportion and scale. They keep us remembering who we are. The age old split in our species between the instinct for the past and the instinct for the future is necessary for our survival. It is enhanced when we understand the past better so that we can more accurately look back.