Book Review: The Runaway Species
The Runaway Species by David Eagleman is a unique book that tries to explain what qualities humans have that enabled us to take over an entire planet. There is no denying the fact that we are a special type of animal with the unique ability to change the environment. This book highlights the fact that the driving force of mankind’s creativity is our ability to imagine a future based on what we know about our environment. For example, we imagined being able to hunt animals after seeing how sharp stone tips were. After imagining a future, it is just a matter of time and energy in order to make it a reality.
On top of this ability, humans are special because we get desensitized to novelty very fast. For example, the introduction of smartphones was a global revolution less than 20 years ago but now, no one is surprised to see this technological marvel. Humans also have a brain with large amounts of neurons connecting regions of sensation and action. This means we can imagine how something would look, feel, and smell before you create it. This ability to desensitize innovation and simulate futures in your head makes it easy to always think about the “next big idea”. As our species gets more and more connected, innovation is happening faster and faster.
The process of human creativity was broken down into three main categories: bending, breaking, and blending. These processes involve looking at how things are in reality and either bending the concept to perform another action, breaking the concept so that new problems can be solved with it, and blending different concepts together in order to generate a brand new solution.
Although I did not write a full post about this topic, I still found it very interesting to learn about what makes us special. Dr. Eagleman does a great job at logically explaining the science behind human creativity. This book has influenced how I look at problems and recommend it to anyone in the business of solving problems. Overall, this book is a 6.5/10.
Here is an Amazon link (Audible/Hardcopy) to the book if you are interested in learning more.
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