What truly underpins the success of humankind, beyond that of any other apex predator, is that we are social. We evolved language as it became useful for survival (“look out! a lion!”), and developed it as it became a part of competing for mates. Sure we have our in-groups and our xenophobia, but tell any small child — free from the racism that comes with age — about a person from the other side of the world and the child will want to talk to him. No other animal is like this.

Humans are so driven to just talk that we have built incredibly complex systems of communicating. First written language, postal services, smoke signals, semaphore. Then the telegraph, radio, optical fiber, huge arrays of switches and routers that ensure our message gets to a specific person out of billions, or the whole world if we so choose. An amazing confluence of intelligence and computational power. The most sophisticated communications network in the known universe, in fact.

Anyway, I use it to look at funny pictures of cats.