The Western model for a meeting is you have an agenda and you come in and everyone says things.

Dinosaurs grew feathers for heat regulation, but the ones that started flying started becoming birds.

1947 America blasted off.

In Japanese organizations, before you have a meeting and you've got an idea that you want to get across, you go talk to everyone and list them. And then the meeting, you don't do it American style where everyone gets up and advocates and conflicts and decides, you get up and formalize agreements.

The entire human race faced a singularity when one small group discovered, ooh, technology. We can live a different way. Eventually, that spelled the death of the old way of life.

Of course, with agriculture came the first big civilizations, the first cities built of mud and brick, the first empires. And it was the administers of these empires who began hiring people to keep track of the wheat and sheep and wine that was owed and the taxes that was owed on them by making marks; marks on clay in that time.

I certainly think we're losing a lot of our connections with other people. I fear in my most pessimistic moments that the computer is simply another step down the road which we have already taken quite a few steps on. We're talking to each other on computers because we don't talk across the fence.