Page 13 - Moč in vloga družbenih inovacij

If people were not innovative, they would not sur- my of life. Everything else is an extension of this.
vive. This has been the case since the beginning
of life.
In a sense, the first innovations of humankind can
be considered as the ways in which they made use
of the various resources that nature has provided
for the survival of the human species. The strike
of lightning, which makes fire possible, which in
turn makes it available for heating, protection
against danger, and aids in the expansion of liv-
ing space and food preparation, can be seen as
the primal force of nature that the human spe-
cies used in an innovative way for its own surviv-
al. The same applies to water, the power of the
sun, plants, natural minerals, metals and all other
natural resources (Meidenbauer, 2004).
Ideas about why, for what purpose, it is possi-
ble to use natural resources for survival would be
considered examples of social innovation in our
times, just as ways of using them would be exam-
ples of technological innovation.
The development of innovation has always fol-
lowed the evolutionary needs and capabilities
of the human species. Humans, on the basis of
their intellect, knowledge, and also experience
and needs, have increasingly adapted and ex-
ploited the initial natural conditions more and
more intelligently and deliberately for their own
purposes and for the continuation of the spe-
cies. Humans began to exploit the resources in
their surroundings for the progress and econo-
For example, they used fire to heat wood, they
made bows and arrows out of wood for hunting
and defence, they made notches in wood which
served as the first way of counting, then later
used it for paintings, then papermaking, and mil-
lennia later for books. In a similar way, they used
other natural resources and, in tandem with their
own evolutionary capacities, built on them in ever
more sophisticated ways. For example: the use of
natural minerals and metals and the chemical el-
ements derived from them, which have supplied
ever new sources of survival, development and
progress, but at the same time provide sources of
protection and new forms of warfare, also linked
to humankind’s natural instinct and power to sur-
vive. Thus, from around 3.3 million years ago, the
first historically recorded form of technological
and social innovation is linked to the production
of tools and weapons from suitable rocks, most
likely invented by Australopithecus afarensis, the
ancestors of the genus Homo, which included the
famous Lucy (Wood, 1991). It is probably this lith-
ic or stone industry that can be considered the
first major technological and social innovation in
the history of the (pre)human species.
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