10 June

It’s easy to look at the world today and assume it’s falling apart. But that maybe because we only look at how humans act with each other, and don’t look at how the things they build and maintain act to glue society together. Objects and technologies have always been the way societies are mostly glued together, they act as mediators in our human affairs and the cooperation and agreement required to build and maintain them are what creates peace and stability. Here’s an example, the International Space Station. It took the equivalent of 3 million people-years to build, or 26 billion work hours. Compare that with our past - 400,000 people-years to build the Great Pyramid of Giza, 100,000 people-years to build the Coliseum in Rome. We’re cooperating today in ways and at a scale we never have before. We’re just looking in the wrong places for evidence.