The amount of information that a person learns in their lifetime can fit on a flash drive with lots of room to spare.
This depresses me.
It doesn’t seem like a lot.
It’s also bizarre:
Human beings have created a device capable of holding all the information they could ever learn, including the information required to build the thing that can store all their information.
Weird. Right?
Also, the device is pretty mundane and inexpensive.
Children know how to use it.
When you lose a flash drive, you probably think, “Oh well, I have three more,” or “Darn it. I’ll buy another one. Thank goodness they cost almost nothing.”
It’s become as ordinary as a hammer or a spoon, but it can store everything you or I will ever know with ease.
In that regard, it’s incredible what we’ve accomplished as a species. The most intelligent animals on Earth, besides humans — bottlenose dolphins, ravens, chimpanzees, elephants, crows, and octopuses — haven’t made anything.
Not one single thing. Ever.
The best that some can do is pick something up and use it as something else.
But an invention? A device made by combining things with other things to make your life easier?
None of them have even come close.
Humans are exceptionally intelligent, even though everything we can know can be stuffed into two or three silicon chips.
