The Human Experience

This episode briefly explores the term ‘The Human Experience’ through the lens of innovation and technology. By listening to this episode, you will learn the importance of the freedom of information and expression in the history of mankind.

Hi everyone!

This is yours truly, Sayar Henry, and thank you for spending time with me on my podcast.

Today, I’m going to share with you some of my thoughts that are related to history, technology, and humanity.

But first, I have to tell you this.

I am fully aware that just by mentioning words like history and humanity would make this episode less interesting to some people. But I also don’t want you guys to think that I’m going to give you a boring lecture or make you think about heavy philosophical questions or ponder on our very existence. I promise you that this episode is not going to demand much of your cognitive power, okay?

Now, with that in mind, I want to ask you something.

You do know the meaning of the word ‘human’, don’t you?

And you also know the meaning of the word ‘experience’, yes?

Good!

Now, what if we combine the two words?

We get ‘human experience’, right?

But what does it really mean?

I mean … when people use the word ‘experience’, we never really are talking about other animals and therefore we don’t necessarily have to include the word ‘human’.

But … if .. that … is the case, why is there a term called ‘the human experience’?

Have you ever thought about it?

Well, based on what I’ve learned and understood throughout my life, the human experience is a term that refers to a range of realities that every human being must go through in his or her life. These realities may include the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual characteristics in one’s life. But it’s a … very … broad topic to think about.

I mean …

Do you remember the moment you were born into this world?

Probably not! And that’s the case for most of us, isn’t it.

So, it means … not remembering that moment … is a part of our human experience.

And what about growing up?

If someone asks you to describe about your growth, what would you say?

You may think like

“Is this person asking me to talk about my childhood years, or am I supposed to talk about my adult life and my growth as a person?”

You get confused by uncertainty and that feeling of confusion is just one tiny part of your human experience that no other animal can have.

And then there are things like education, jobs, relationships, health, crimes, conflict, and mortality. Right?

That means, even if you study and draw all the knowledge from biology, anthropology, history, literature, art, philosophy, psychology, and religion, there are still many aspects of the human experience that haven’t been explored and analyzed.

So, the irony is, even though we, humans, are the only species on earth that are entitled to the human experience, we still can’t really understand the full scope of it yet because there are just too many perspectives involved. In addition, the nature of human experience also keeps changing from one generation to another. 

And because of this complex nature, I’m not going to talk about the whole spectrum of the human experience in this episode. Instead, I’ll just focus mainly on one aspect of the human experience – innovation and technology.

What’s really intriguing to me is that the rate we experience innovation and technology differs from one generation to another, from one century to another, and even from one millennium to another.

To see what I really mean by that, let’s use our imagination to go back 2.6 million years into the past, to the prehistoric time, the era of our primitive ancestors which is also known as the Stone Age.

For these cavemen, the most important innovation was the invention of tools made from stone. After that, it probably took about half a million years or more to just discover fire and find ways to use it. Then it took another half a million years for them to come up with languages. The emergence of language had a great impact on the evolution of our ancestors. Language greatly enhanced the way homo sapiens process their day-to-day experiences and knowledge, and their ability to communicate with ideas and to connect with other members of their group.

It shows that combination of tools, fire, and language radically enhanced the human experience of our ancestors. These helped them organize large-scale migrations from one geographical location to another, and also to go through the challenges of the Ice Age.

Then from there, it took only 120, 000 years more to get to the invention of agriculture. It is a sign showing that language had accelerated the human experience of our ancestors and lead to a much better quality of life. Then humankind advanced steadily from Atone Age to Bronze Age, and then to Iron Age, and finally to the era of Greek philosophers.

If you look at that timeline and think about it, you’ll notice that each of the major improvements of humankind more than 3000 years ago from today took several hundred thousand years to emerge. 

But then if you look back just 2000 years ago from now, there is a huge difference in the number of major improvements and innovation that we have achieved compared to what our ancestors did.

What is more, the acceleration of innovation in the past 100 years has been changing exponentially. And now, we have inherently become species that cannot live without always-on, always-connected devices, and are on the verge of becoming multi-planetary species.

Why is it that we have discovered so much more things in the last 2000 years?

And why is it that the human experience has changed a lot more in the past 100 years than it did in the last 2000 years?

Well, in my opinion, this rate of change has something to do with freedom of information and the rate at which information flows.

Back in the days before the invention of printing press in the 15th Century, information could only be transferred from one place to another either orally or in delicate manuscripts. It was not readily accessible to external parties. Then, when the printing machine was invented, the flow of information could be multiplied by as many times as people wanted. These printed and multiplied pages of literature and academic disciplines became the source of inspiration for the next generation of scholars, philosophers, and mathematicians who would continue to learn more and strive for innovation in their own terms.

Then over 500 years later,

the technology of radio transmission was invented, reducing the geographical limitations of the flow of information. Entertainment or information became simultaneously accessible to thousands of receivers in different locations. During the years between 1920 to 1940, it became the primary way for people to learn about distant places and events.

Then after WWII, the age of television broadcasting arose, and it became an important mass medium for advertising, propaganda, and entertainment.

Not surprisingly, it only took less than two more decades to arrive at the digital revolution in the late 1960s. Computers started transforming businesses and consumers around the world. By the time personal computers were omnipresent in the developed countries, the Internet was made available to the public in 1990s.

It was the beginning of the internet explosion, and it increased the speed of the information exponentially, enabling people to draw conclusions faster, and therefore use the knowledge more effectively. And since then, the world has become much, much faster. And it has been enhancing our human experience in unprecedented ways.

Now, you see why I believe that freedom of information and the flow of information plays a big role in our human experience. Because it can accelerate everything else.

Whether it is art, technology, or science, innovation requires creativity, knowledge, and experimentation. But creativity and knowledge wouldn’t exist without freedom of information. It means that the more freedom we have, to think and to express, the more inspiration we can spread to others who will continue to enhance the collective human experience from this generation to the next. 

So my final word for this episode is that it is our human responsibility to make information equally available to everyone, and that if we are still living in fear of expressing something out to the world, we have got to do something about it. 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of this episode. I really hope listening to this topic makes you think deeper about the meaning of the human experience, the reason behind our fast-paced world, and the importance of the freedom of information. Thank you for listening and I hope you come back for more. I’ll see you in the next one.