It all starts with a thought, I think.
In the shower or that first caffeine hit.
Who knows where thoughts come from?
Why are some thoughts fleeting and why others change the world?
Consider this, you have travelled back in time.
An engineer points at a round thing.
From the engineer’s mouth you perceive two ancients sounds strung together, “Me. Do”.
With a deft transfer of energy from the engineer’s body, through their arm, and out a hand to gently initiate the rolling of the wood, mankind’s trajectory forks and the wheel rolls over your foot.
Sometimes thought germinates collaboratively.
Maybe the wheel was a group idea.
Maybe two, or three people were tasked with acquiring large round river stones for the town.
<aside> 💡 The invention of the first wheel, like most inventions, likely occurred independently, and simultaneously, with other locally crafted object-rolling mechanisms.
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Would a small pod of people struggling with a large river stone, collectively iterate until they found the most efficient method to work together?
<aside> ⌛ It took the Mesopotamians 300 years to flip their potters wheel upright for conveyance. From throwing clay to carrying hay. Long adoption cycle. Same toy. Different orientation. Luckily we live in a technical renaissance that allows for continual collaborative invention. In our SaaS driven world, can anyone claim that they have done nothing but stand on the shoulders of giants?
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Could a community, astride each other, manifest the something so magnificent as the wheel simply by supporting each others? Is it ever, “Me. Do.”? Or is it always, “We. Do.”?