the-environment. The journalistic cliché that this is the "information
age" is misleading if it suggests that in the past, either recent or dis-
tant, we did not depend on information. Think of the ordinary life of
foragers in small nomadic groups dispersed in a savannah environ-
ment, collecting edibles on their way and trying to catch game to sup-
plement their diet. They could not operate without vast amounts of
detailed, preferably reliable and constantly updated information about
their surroundings. Contrary to what we may imagine, gathering fruit
and other vegetal nutrients is not quite as simple as picking foodstuffs
off supermarket shelves. One must find out and remember where dif-
ferent species can be found, where past collections were particularly [121]
successful, in what season, etc. One must also store vast amounts of
knowledge about the different tastes of different nutrients, their
shapes, their smells as well as their similarity with potentially danger-
ous substances. The same goes for hunting, which requires complex
skills but also quite a lot of experience and information. Different
species are stalked, approached and attacked in different ways. As far
as predators go, humans are not especially well equipped. They com-
pensate for their physical weakness not just by low cunning but also
by using information acquired in the field and transmitted across gen-
erations. Which leads us to the next point.^24
Humans are cooperatorsHumans have for a long time—long enough to make a difference in
evolutionary terms—lived in organized groups and in intense social
interaction. Humans need cooperation because they depend on rich
information, well beyond what individual experience can provide.
Other people provide most of this information. Also, most of what
humans do requires cooperation. What I said above about foraging
and hunting makes sense in the context of some people carrying out
partof an operation and othersbeing able to do theirpart because of
the first group's actions. This is cooperation not just in the simple
sense of "doing things jointly" but rather as "doing different things in
a coordinated manner." Now cooperation requires specific capacities
and dispositions.
These general requirements of human existence have two impor-
tant consequences: Because they only survive through cooperation
and because they need information, humans are generally dependent
uponinformation provided by other humans. This is not to deny that
THEKIND OF MIND ITTAKES