Chapter 13 - Necessity’s Mother

            Chapter 13 of Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel” focuses on attempting to answer the question of how and why each continent evolved technologically at such different rates from each other. Diamond starts this chapter off with the 1908 finding of the Phaistos disk in an ancient palace on the island of Crete. The Phaistos disk is a small circular clay disk dated circa 1700 B.C., that on first glance, does not seem very impressive, however, upon closer examination, one can see “each side to be covered with writing, resting on a curved line of 241 signs or letters neatly divided by etched vertical lines into groups of several signs, possibly constituting words” (239). He goes on to say that this object is of particular importance because not only is it the earliest printed document yet to be found, but also, that it was evidently made using a set of stamps, rather than the hand-carving one would expect of this time period. Diamond points out that the discovery of the Phaistos disk begs the questions of why this printing technology was not widely adopted right away in Crete, why it was invented in 1700 B.C. Crete, and not another ancient civilization, and why it took thousands of years for it to reach the rest of the world. In a broader spectrum, Diamond also questions the rapid expansion of technology in Eurasia compared to that of other continents.

Diamond starts off his discussion with the theory that “necessity is the mother of invention” (243). Even though he does agree that sometimes it is true that inventions do come to be as a product of the unfulfilled needs of a society, he challenges this phrase and states that most times it is actually invention that is the mother of necessity. In other words, what Diamond is discussing in this part of the chapter is that when something that has no initial demand is invented and succeeds in becoming an integral part of that society, eventually, this product does build a demand and soon enough, the invention becomes a necessity. An example Diamond gives that perfectly illustrates this idea is the invention of the motor vehicle. When motor vehicles were first introduced, there was no real need for them, as society at the time was perfectly content with travel by horse and steam-powered railroads. When the military eventually realized that it needed trucks, however, the public followed suit, and within 50 years, every city in America was no longer reliant on horses and wagons, but rather, motor vehicles.

            The next topic Diamond brushes upon is that of the origins of inventions, and how they may not be as “original” as one may be led to believe, as well as what is dubbed the “heroic theory of invention,” or the overemphasize placed on the importance of the individual genius that developed the creation in question. In this section of the chapter, Diamond states that for almost all modern inventions, there was a precursor that was used and improved upon to come up with the final product, and rebuffs the idea that “X invented Y” in these cases. He then goes on to relate this to the main issues of the chapter, questioning whether the world’s history would perhaps be different if one of these inventors had not been born in the right place or time, or had not had competent predecessors or successors, as was the case with the Phaistos disk creator.

Another topic the author discusses is that once a use has been found for an invention, the inventor then has to persuade society into adopting it, stating that having better, more efficient technology does not necessarily mean acceptance of this new product. One example of this is the QWERTY keyboard. Diamond tells us that the purpose of the seemingly randomly and counterproductively placed lettering was actually deliberately done so in order to slow typists down, as early models of typewriters would often jam if their keys were struck too fast. Once manufacturers remedied this issue, a more effective keyboard layout was developed that would significantly both increase typing speed and reduce effort, however, by then typists were far too invested in the QWERTY layout to accept the new proposed one.

After discussing the receptivity of one society, Diamond moves onto explaining the receptivity of the different continents, as well as how readily societies can actually receive technology, and how these factors ultimately played a role in the development of technology. In describing receptivity, Diamond gives the examples of China and the Islamic Middle East. He states during the Middle Ages, the now considered conservative Islamic societies of the Middle East were actually at the forefront of technological advancement, and even surpassed Europe in literacy. Meanwhile, China was even more technologically innovative than the Middle East, producing many inventions, however, eventually ceasing this innovativeness as well. He concludes that “it is untrue that there are continents whose societies have tended to be innovative and contents whose societies have tended to be conservative,” but rather, that any continent can have both conservative societies, as well as innovative ones.

The final topic Diamond discusses is where innovations come from, and the importance of diffusion. He states the inventions come from the observing and handling of nature, illustrated with the example of the behaviors of clay when dried or heated and its spread from Japan to other parts of the world. Diamond propositions that inventions can spread in one of two ways: societies learn of the invention and adopt it, or the society becomes so disadvantaged due to the lack of the invention that they ceased to exist. Diamond states that the diffusion of an invention is critical because since “technology tends to catalyze itself… advances [in technology] depend upon previous mastery of simpler problems.

To conclude the chapter, Diamond discusses how geography, not intellect, are what led to Eurasia’s superior technology. He says that there may have very well been geniuses like Thomas Edison in technologically underdeveloped continents, however, these people directed their inventiveness toward their own problems, which, of course, differed greatly from those of Edison, and thus led to different outcomes.