• niktemadur@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    So we domesticated fire, that’s one step out of the swamp and steppes.
    Then there was agriculture and animal husbandry, we became sedentary.

    Writing developed, accelerating growth in the arts, math and engineering, the sciences… we had domesticated knowledge and memory - data storage.

    Before we knew it, the printing press popped up and soon after we domesticated something abstract and invisible, awesome and truly fundamental - electromagnetism. That’s is the big game changer right there.

    We have figured out our physical place in the universe.
    We can image distant supermassive black holes, we have mapped the farthest, faintest reaches of the visible universe using the oldest light there is - the Cosmic Microwave Background (which started out as orange light 13.7 billion years ago).

    We are now in the process of harnessing sunlight and the wind; the genome; we can now even perform data operations using quantum superimposed electron states, harnessing the subatomic wave function itself.

    Surely we can now domesticate cruelty-free protein chemistry. So many steps away from the swamp and steppes already, so far we can’t turn and go back again. What’s one more step?