Teaching Others Obvious Links 2 Skills

Tools come in many vastly difference forms, but all are made by some entity to assist in its evolution and growth. And more and more, tools have grown from the physical into the informational: with the development of the computer, many tools are merely programs, collections of organized code that is capable of helping us do things more easily.

Let's rewind a bit, to the very first beings making tools. I won't say they were humans, because nowadays it is know that even animals make or use tools. Crows for instance can solve puzzles consisting of up to 8 steps, without having been taught the entire sequence in one process: they were taught the single steps separately, and put the required configuration together by themselves!.

Now the crow obviously does not create tools, but it does use them. That can be considered the first phase of tool use. Next comes the slightly smarter use of adapting found tools to become more effective: chipping away at flint stones to create a sharp edge for cutting. And then of course tool adaptation to build better tools: using the flint knives to sharpen sticks into spears and arrows, which are tools with vastly extended reach.

Next of course comes the creation of tools to make more tools. Usage of tools explodes because once we have the machine to make the tool, creating a single tool is basically very cheap. Of course we still need humans to design the manufacturing lines, but since they use more and more computer tools, this is rapidly advancing. Tesla for instance designed the entire manufacturing apparatus for their heat pump fully in virtual reality even before creating a single part of it.

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