Until very recently in the human story, material technologies were developed without being incentivized by personal enrichment or reward but, rather, knowledge was widely shared in what we might call an “open source” model; perhaps as a result of this, for the most part, technologies were developed in response to real needs. Material innovation was slower than today, sure; but ever since it became a race, we have been racing toward catastrophe, with wildly disproportionate benefits accruing to a minority of people.