SnapPea Design Reading List: Sapiens 📗
Welcome to the Inaugural Edition of the SnapPea Design Reading List! 📖
Our team will be sharing monthly reviews into the books that had an effect on our process for approaching innovation. Genres will include psychology, business, history, innovation strategy, and science fiction. You can be sure to expect a diverse set of recommendations to expand your mindset and toolkit.
SnapPea Design is an IoT Design Studio located in Kitchener’s Catalyst 137. We develop strategies, design hardware and software in a way that focuses on manufacturability, and tie it all up with a bow of thoroughly-conducted exploratory research, thoughtful user experiences, and delightful visual languages. We’re a one-stop-shop.
Hi There! 👋🏽
Allow me to introduce myself, I’m Victoria Vandenberg, a Visual Interaction Designer at SnapPea Design. Books that dive into human behaviour derived from our hunter-gatherer roots are my absolute favourite. I feel like they act as a gateway to understanding our species and how to design in alignment with historical human behaviour patterns. This month I’m going to talk about a book that completely redefined my relationship with design, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. No matter your discipline of work, this novel and its incredibly synthesized documentation of humans will alter your critical lens and get you thinking holistically about some of the world’s most pressing questions.
Recap of the Recap 📽
Sapiens follows the trajectory of the three revolutions that shaped humans as we know them to be today.
1. The Cognitive Revolution (70,000 years ago)
2. The Agricultural Revolution (10,000 years ago)
3. The Scientific Revolution (500 years ago)
Each revolution played a critical role in the development of homo sapiens; impacting the way we exist, think, build, socialize, and research. Firstly, the Cognitive Revolution commenced when we started to communicate in ways that had never existed in language. It was during this time that interactions showed the human ability to imagine… To communicate about things our senses have never interacted with, including sight, touch, and smell. This is a trait that is only found in homo sapiens and marked the first point for our overtaking to the top of the food chain. Examples of this include religion, myth, and fantasy and creating an existence for the intangible. During this time, homo sapiens were hunter-gatherers that existed in groups of less than 150, every band member had distinct roles for the survival of the group. Privacy was minimal but loneliness was minimal.
60,000 years later came the agricultural revolution which also propelled the value of land ownership. Prior to the agricultural revolution bands of homo sapiens worked in harmony with the transitions of the earth’s energy supply. This revolution altered the way that humans developed networks and their migration habits. Now, homo sapiens goals became more geographically fixed, as there became an attachment to land through agriculture and the distribution and owning of plots of land. Such trends propelled the creation of formal towns and consequent government hierarchies to support the need for regulation of groups of humans over 150. Although the Agricultural Revolution didn’t enhance the quality of life for homo sapiens, it increased food supply and demand for labour to tend the crops, thus it allowed for exponential growth in population.
Most recently, around 500 years ago, the Scientific Revolution occurred. It was during this time that sapiens decoupled from the notion that sapiens do not know all of the answers, straying from theological points of view. Such a discovery led to the idea that if we asked the right questions and used scientific methods, it could lead to more information. Consequently, sapiens began to discover new information, learnt to synthesize insights to create new information, and began an unprecedented quest for knowledge.
What I have just explained is the highest level overview of Harari’s already incredibly summarized overview of humankind. Thus, if it even slightly piqued your interest, I recommend checking it out this holiday season.
Key Takeaways ✅
The chronological narrative of these three revolutions completely contextualizes the rise of humans and the structure of our societies through our tumultuous history. Harari takes over 100,000 years of human existence and distills it down to 500 or so pages. The topic areas he covers within the three revolutions include governance, economics, psychology, religion, technology, anthropology, biology, scientific method, and politics. Truly taking a macro lens to the development of our species.
A Permanent Addition to my Bookshelf 📚
Design begins with understanding human behaviour.
Consequently, this book holds one of the most novel spots on my bookshelf. Whenever I need to reference the thought process of humans, the societies we’ve built or articulate why some behaviours are engrained from our hunter-gatherer past, this book becomes my guide. These insights become particularly important when making design decisions throughout the innovation process.
Sapiens has changed the way I approach design for the following reason… Harari emphasizes that nothing occurs without impacting our other systems and through his use of literal world-changing examples, he articulates the significance of using a macro lens to analyze contexts.
Your Turn! 📚
You can purchase your own copy here or feel free to rent it through Libby — a digital system that connects to local library networks. All you need is a library card (this app has genuinely changed my relationship with ebooks)!
Feel free to say hello 👋🏽
If you’re interested in learning more about SnapPea Design and our unique approach to Design, please feel free to reach out to Stuart!
Stuart McCrory | stuart@snappeadesign.com
