The dance of life : the other dimension of time by Hall Edward T. (Edward Twitchell) 1914-2009

Author:Hall, Edward T. (Edward Twitchell), 1914-2009
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Time
Publisher: Garden City, N.Y. : Anchor Press/Doubleday
Published: 1983-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

cumulative changes in which the generation is the shortest interval in which genetic changes may occur. Therefore, small animals like flies, and bacteria and viruses that reproduce very fast, can evolve adaptations to the environment in very short time periods. Worldwide resistance to DDT by flies and mosquitoes is one of the best-known examples of this sort of adaptation.

If human beings had had to evolve culture genetically, it is doubtful if we would have progressed beyond the Stone Age. To speed up evolution and achieve flexibility in meeting environmental challenges, humankind began to evolve its extensions. The human species, however, paid a price when it chose the extension route. Extensions are a particular kind of tool that not only speed up work and make it easier but also separate people from their work. Extensions are a special kind of amplifier, and in the process of amplification, important details are frequently left out. What gets left out is largely a matter of chance and sometimes what is left out may be more important than what is amplified.

One of the most important central issues to be understood about extensions is that they are rooted in specific biological and physiological functions. They originate in us! Properly read, one can tell an incredible amount about human beings by studying their extensions. In fact, there is little that can't be discovered. Extensions can be viewed as externalized manifestations of human drives, needs, and knowledge, and they even reflect our unconscious drives. Given the current state of the world, this is sometimes difficult to envision, but no one else made our extensions—we did. Examples of extensions are: the telephone extending the human voice, television extending both the eye and the ear, cranes extending the hand and the arm and the back, computers extending the memory and some of the arithmetic parts of the central nervous system, telescopes and microscopes extending the lens of the eye, cameras extending the visual memory, knives extending the cutting and biting capabilities of the teeth and fingernails, and automobiles extending our legs and feet.

There is one more point to be made, and that is that whenever something is extended, the extension begins to take on a life of

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