At some point in history, someone picked up a rock and made a hand-axe, used flint and made fire, a mill to harness water power, an abacus to calculate. Of course, the use of tools and technology developed incrementally, shifting both the techniques and the tools themselves, becoming the systems that fit the definition of technology…all the way up to today’s complex artificial intelligence tools. 

Whether we mean proto-humans or contemporary coders, I get that the myth of the discrete, isolated eureka moment is just that – mostly, predominately, a myth. Still, I like to imagine these moments. And when I think about discovery, invention, and innovation, I also imagine the inevitable censure they sparked, the instinctive pushback against anything novel: “Remember when we were all in the moment during mammoth braais, not zoned out, painting on cave walls like kids today?”