Kevin Ashton discovers that “a can of Coke is a product of our world entire and contains inventions that trace all the way back to the origins of our species.”
He concludes that “The number of individuals who know how to make a can of Coke is zero. The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero. This famously American product is not American at all. Invention and creation is something we are all in together. Modern tool chains are so long and complex that they bind us into one people and one planet. They are not only chains of tools, they are also chains of minds: local and foreign, ancient and modern, living and dead — the result of disparate invention and intelligence distributed over time and space.“.
It may all be true, but that doesn’t make it healthy.