Invention's New Mother

THE DAWN OF MAN BEGAN eleven thousand years ago. (I think it was a Thursday.) This is interesting for many reasons, but one specific factoid has always amazed me: The wheel was not invented until 5000 B.C., probably by the Mesopotamians. This means that for roughly four thousand years, people were just dragging stuff around. Now, I realize folks were a little less forward thinking in those days, and they probably directed most of their creative energy toward raping and killing each other. But didn't anybody notice that decapitated skulls rolled downhill? The British didn't start using the wheel until 500 B.C. Somehow, they needed 8,500 years to come up with the wheel but only 10,980 years to come up with Def Leppard. These are curious priorities.

I find myself thinking about the invention of the wheel whenever I send someone a text message. This is not because I own a round cell phone; this is because text messaging represents a certain kind of invention: Texting is Antiwheel Technology. What this means is that the advent of texting is completely antithetical to the advent of the wheel. The wheel was something everyone needed for centuries, and I'm sure that need ... // 85% Remaining