The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History

“What drives history is the human ambition to alter one’s condition to match one’s hopes. But just what people hoped for, both in the material and spiritual realms, and how they pursued their hopes depended on the information, ideas, and examples available to them. Thus, webs channeled and coordinated everyday human ambition and action—and still do.”

This quote establishes that webs drive human innovation through the spread of information, ideas, and influences among different societies. Throughout the text, the authors demonstrate that as webs became broader and tighter, the amount of information increased, and the pace of exchange quickened. Ultimately, the expansion and tightening of webs characterizes the process of globalization and the homogenization of human society.

“Economic specialization and exchange created poverty as well as wealth. Skilled warriors sometimes turned their weapons against people who looked to them for protection. And populations acquired disease immunities only by repeated exposure to lethal epidemics. Nonetheless, the survivors of these risks enjoyed marked formidability in relation to people living outside such webs.”

The text draws attention to the negative impact of expanding and tightening the human web: increased inequality, violence, and disease. While these downsides may appear to deterrents to web expansion and tightening, the text suggest that inclusion in the web is ultimately more beneficial than exclusion. In subsequent sections, the authors illustrate the advantages that the web confers to its participants, including collective wealth, exposure to new peoples and ideas, enhanced educational opportunities, and technological innovation.

“So it appears that our species is unique in a very special way. It alone created a world of symbolic meanings, capable both of exceedingly rapid evolution and also of coordinating the behavior of indefinite numbers of individuals—totaling in our time, billions of persons. That accomplishment is, in fact, what this book is about.”

The text contends that the human web originated with the development of speech. Since growth and tightening of the web depend on the exchange of information and ideas, speech is integral because it provides the means to do so. As later sections discuss, one impact of globalization is the loss of local languages, the domination of a few global languages, and the syncretization of languages among the human population.