Let's start with a hypothesis. In 3000 AD, a "Human Success" became a bestseller. This book reveals the fundamental reason why humans dominate the galaxy:Exchange of information! The five information revolutions have completely made human beings stand at the top of the food chain in the galaxy.

The first information revolution

One hundred thousand years ago, in Africa, Homo sapiens had a genetic mutation and had the ability to speak language. This can be counted as the first information revolution. Humans have discovered that words can be built into meaningful long sentences like building blocks. For example, a Homo sapiens leader held a meeting and said: "Brothers, when the sun comes out tomorrow, let's go to the Neanderthal Valley and kill the gang of five big and three thick cavemen. Remember, in groups, ten Hit one personally!"

The footprints of Homo sapiens conquering the world

In this way, under the attacks of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and other human races became extinct one after another. Since then, only "Homo sapiens" has been mentioned as "human beings". Unlike dogs, there are Dalmatians, Huskies, and Chinese Pastoral Dogs.

The second information revolution

32,000 years ago, in the south of France, a group of people at the Grotte Chauvet drew rhinos, lions and bears. This can be regarded as the second information revolution.

Chauvet Cave Paintings

From then on, human beings have the ability to "draw a circle to curse you" in illusion. Draw and cast magic on animals that look uncomfortable, and make them obey. For people who look uncomfortable, make a humanoid thing and prick him with a needle.

The curse of the villain in the Qing palace drama

However, there are more powerful people who draw a totem as the patron saint of the tribe. For example, the patron saint of some tribes is a snake, and the patron saint of some tribes is a cow... Later, when a tribe defeated a tribe, the patron saint of the tribe was added to the patron saint of the defeated tribe, and finally gathered rabbit eyes, Antlers, a bull's mouth, a camel's head, a mirage belly, a tiger's paw, an eagle's claw, a fish scale, and a snake's body, the new species formed is called a dragon. The people of this tribe believe that they are the descendants of the dragon, which is very beneficial for the glory of the tribe to work together and unanimously.

Dragon Totem

The power of images is enormous, and some religious communicators believe that paintings help remind believers of accepted teachings they have accepted, ensuring that divine deeds are not forgotten. Pope Gregory said: "Writing is to the literate what painting is to the illiterate."

Da Vinci's Last Supper

The third information revolution

5,000 years ago, in Egypt, humans invented hieroglyphs. This can be regarded as the third information revolution. From then on, images can be abstracted to record language, which is amazing. Human civilization can accumulate progress, and there is no need for word of mouth to cause information omission.

Later, the Phoenicians merged the words with the same pronunciation and used letters to spell the words. This tradition has continued to the present English.

In contrast to this, in the far eastern lands, the Chinese civilization also independently invented pictographs, because they appeared on the unearthed oracle bones, which are called oracle bone inscriptions, and this is the origin of Chinese characters. Chinese characters have been passed on from generation to generation along with the Chinese civilization without interruption. It is the only original civilization in the world that has not been interrupted. The cost of learning Chinese characters is extremely high compared to Pinyin. During the New Culture Movement, even the slogan "If Chinese characters are not destroyed, China must perish" was issued.

Wang Xizhi Lanting Preface

Of course, Chinese characters are not useless. Chinese characters are a relatively efficient way of encoding information transmission. We often see that a thick English book becomes thinner instantly after being translated into Chinese. It wasn't until Claude Shannon proposed information theory that we understood this truth. After the founding of New China, in order to reduce the difficulty of learning, the mainland adopted a less radical solution - simplifying Chinese characters. So there is a stalk of "Melancholy Taiwan Turtle (Melancholy Taiwan Turtle)" written by mainland children and Taiwanese children.

Taiwanese scientists did an interesting experiment. They asked children from Taiwan and the mainland to copy "Melancholy Taiwanese Turtle" 100 times. After copying, the scientists concluded that the children in mainland China lacked the spirit of resistance!

The fourth information revolution

The fourth information revolution started 2,000 years ago, and its birthplace is China. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, Cai Lun of China improved the papermaking technique and invented "Caihou paper". This has a huge effect on the spread of human civilization, which makes the spread of civilization more convenient and less costly. People no longer need to engrave on oracle bones, bronzes, or bamboo slips. After the invention of papermaking, people found that handwriting could not be copied and the efficiency was too low, so woodblock printing was invented. Later, I was not satisfied with the efficiency of engraving, and invented movable type printing. The characters are still those characters, but many books can be printed, which once again accelerated the efficiency of information dissemination.

The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment are all inextricably linked to printing. It is printing that allows information to be disseminated efficiently, gradually enlightens the wisdom of the people, and brings human civilization to a new height.

The fifth information revolution

The fifth information revolution began in the 19th century. Human beings started the scientific revolution, and people's dream of long-distance transmission of information was developed rapidly. The British Cook and the American Morse independently invented the telegraph (Tele-graphy means long-distance writing) almost at the same time. Then, the Italian Muzi and the American Bell invented the telephone almost at the same time (Tele-phone means long-distance voice).

By 1948, a paper called "A Mathematic Theory of Communication" was published, providing the theoretical basis for this information revolution. The author is the great father of information theory - Claude Shannon (Claude Shannon). Shannon proposed the famous information entropy, which allows all information to be quantified. The amount of information in a piece of information is proportional to its uncertainty.

Information entropy formula and Claude Shannon

For example, why is it not news that a dog bites a man, but it is news that a man bites a dog? If explained by information theory, the uncertainty of a dog biting a man is small, while the uncertainty of a man biting a dog is large. Why do English books become thinner when translated into Chinese? Because English is redundant, for example, this sentence: Most people have little difficulty in reading this sentence. If you remove all the vowels in this sentence, you still can guess this sentence Meaning: Mst ppl hv lttl dffclty n rdng ths sntnc.

Under the guidance of information theory, people have entered the PC era, the Internet era, and the mobile Internet era. Big data, physical networks, artificial intelligence, and blockchain provide continuous fresh blood for this revolution. Under this information revolution, companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, JD.com, Xiaomi, and NetEase were born. The reason why they succeed is in this information revolution. Efficient processing of information, so that information continues to add value.

Just like Homo Sapiens who wanted to get out of Africa, some people in every era have their own ideals and aspirations. How should humans living in the fifth information revolution counterattack? In fact, the answer is not difficult to come up with: Looking at the entire human civilization, the ancestors of Homo sapiens did not have the sharp teeth of other animals, and did not have the burly body and huge brain capacity of Neanderthals, but Homo sapiens could Passing information through communication settles everything.

In the PC era, a software called PowerPoint suddenly rose 30 years after it was invented, because people discovered that it can integrate language, image and text information, and magnify personal abilities.

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