The first technology was character.

Before artificial intelligence.

Before the internet.

Before our ancestors shaped stone into tools or learned to master fire, they depended upon technologies for survival

Technology is anything that mediates between our needs and the environment in which those needs must be met.

A spear mediates between hunger and prey.

A coat mediates between our bodies and the cold.

A bridge mediates between our desire to travel and a river’s obstruction.

But long before humanity built physical tools, we faced another environment: each other.

To survive in groups, our ancestors needed ways to manage fear, temptation, conflict, cooperation, reputation and trust. The technologies they developed were not made of wood, stone or metal. They were patterns of behaviour.

We call these patterns virtues.

The Incomplete Animal

It has been said that man is the incomplete animal.

Lions are born with sharp teeth and claws. Eagles are born with wings and brilliant eyesight. But human beings are not born with the tools they need to master their environment. They must create those tools themselves.

This is the origin of technology: the ability to recognise patterns in the world and develop solutions to recurring problems.

The Virtue Toolbox

Every technology solves a problem.

• A knife solves the problem of cutting.
• A wheel solves the problem of transport.
• A telescope solves the problem of distance.

Virtues solve problems too.

• Courage allows us to act despite fear.
• Temperance allows us to resist excess.
• Justice allows strangers to cooperate.
• Honesty allows trust to form.
• Wisdom allows us to navigate complexity.

Seen in this way, virtues are not arbitrary rules handed down by tradition. They are behavioural technologies developed over thousands of years to solve recurring human problems.

Like all technologies, they emerged and persisted because they worked.

A tribe whose members could not trust one another would struggle to survive. A society incapable of restraint would consume itself. A people unable to distinguish wisdom from impulse would repeatedly make the same mistakes.

Virtues are humanity’s oldest solutions to humanity’s oldest problems.

The Modern Problem

The central problem of our time is how human beings can adapt to the ever-increasing speed of change in our environment – caused by the pace of change of technology – without losing our humanity or destroying the planet.

‘The Gap’ is the distance between our palaeolithic biology and our modern world.

We remain essentially the same while the modern world accelerates into the distance.

The question is: how do we close the gap?

Planet of the Apes

On its own, this is a very big abstract problem to solve.

We can’t rewind the clock. Pandora’s box is already open.

Nor can we ignore it. The awesome power that technology holds – to shape and reshape the world – cannot be allowed to continue spinning out of control.

• Nuclear Armageddon requires splitting the atom.
• Globalised terrorism requires the internet.
• And manmade climate change requires industrialisation.

It matters how technology is used, for good or for ill. We are still primates. The problem is that we are primates who now wield tools with godlike power over our environment.

Yet in that gap – between us and our environment – there are a set of very ancient tools. Another form of technology. A way of us mediating between ourselves and our world.

Virtues don’t survive on their own. They are passed from generation to generation: through stories, rituals, customs, institutions and expectations. Together, these mechanisms of transmission form what we call culture.

And, if I can be brave enough to give it a name, that’s what culture is.

We often imagine technological progress as a story of machines.

• The stone axe.
• The plough.
• The steam engine.
• The computer.
• Artificial intelligence.

Yet every one of these inventions depends upon an older technology.

Character.

For all our scientific achievements, we remain the same incomplete animal we have always been. We still feel fear, envy, greed, pride, love and hope. Our tools have changed beyond recognition. We have not.

The challenge of the twenty-first century is therefore not merely to invent better technologies, but to become better users of them.

Because the first technology was character. And it is the only technology that reminds us what all the others are for.