What is Work and What is Tech?

A History for Kids & Adults

Work is what we do to help others by doing something useful for them.  Work is needed for us to grow and flourish.  It can be cooperative, competitive, difficult and fun.  

Work is an important part of every human being’s life, and every animal too.  If we look at our backyard, we can see the birds and squirrels making an effort (doing work) to find food and build homes.  They have come up with unique habits and systems to eat, sleep, and make babies.  Humans do the same things, only more so, and we have come up with clever tools to master the world around us.  

Many other animals can use tools too!

Animals hunting for food

Animals working together with other species

Only humans have learned to make fire

We’ve been making fire for a million or so years, but as far as anyone seems to know, things started getting interesting around 6,000 years ago.

What happened then?  

Humans used to run around in small gangs called hunter-gatherers.

They hunted animals and gathered fruits and nuts.  They used tools made from stone and wood.  They also figured out that cooking food with fire makes it taste better.  Humans were also hunted.  It was possible to be eaten by a wild animal.  Yikes! 

Since safety is important and humans are smart, the gatherers slowly started figuring out how to band together in safe places.  They found caves to live in.  Then they started building houses.  At first, they were not so different from building a blanket fort.  

When they stayed in the same places for a while, they noticed the best times for certain edible plants to grow.  Wheat and barley are grasses that can be grown and ground into flour to make bread.  

Bread is a great food and energy, especially for people who are on their feet growing food all day.  As the farming fields grew and grew, people grew enough food to feed animals like cows and sheep, tame them, and use them for food and other stuff.  Here are some basic combos of to make our tools and inventions:

People are hardwired to work together to build things, make food, and create!  

When people started growing their food instead of looking for it every day, more food was created, and people could make more people.  The growing number of people built better houses to live in and other buildings to protect their food and tools.  Groups of people living together like this is what we call civilization.  

Different people began to get good at different things: farming, making pottery, sailing, and defending other people are some examples.  People could now exchange their time and effort for things they could not make themselves, or even things that were made in far away places.  This is called trading.  For example I have not learned how to weave a rug, but I use my writing and speaking to make money to buy a rug from people who are good at it! 

People noticed that it was easier to build things and keep track of things when they were written down.  Before civilization, the hunter gatherers made art and stories with paintings on cave walls, but they didn’t have words like the words we are using now.  All of this stuff I have mentioned, making fire, making soap, making food, and even making words is an example of technology. 

Hammurabi’s Code

This is the first best example of a set of written rules.  Hammurabi and his people worked together and made a tablet using a hammer, chisel, and a very hard stone to write down some basic and important rules:

1. Hammurabi is the boss.  Here is a list of all the good stuff he’s done

2. The Gods are Hammurabi’s boss: here are their names and the good stuff they’ve done

3. Don’t lie, cheat, or steal.  Here are the penalties for breaking the rules.  

4. Here are all the rules for trading with one another

5. Plan the work, work the plan.

Hammurabi lived 3,700 years ago.  Life was hard, punishments were tough, and there was danger of real violence everywhere.  So the rules had to be very clear.  Other civilizations made their own rules.  Sometimes these rules don’t match up and cause conflict (fighting), other times they line up so that different people can trade peacefully, sometimes people need to make new rules together and agree to them in writing.  This written promise is called a contract.  In fact, Hammurabi’s code is a written contract between him and his people. 

I also make contracts.  These contracts are between my business and other businesses.  I’ll explain that business but first, a little more history.

In the many years since Hammurabi, civilization has gotten more peaceful, because more people keep finding more and better ways to improve living.  When food and money are scarce, people fight over it.  When food and money are abundant, there are not really good reasons to fight.  Security fuels creativity and trade.  

As things got safer and better, people had more time to think, write and build.  They started making machines to make things instead of doing everything by hand.  Instead of grinding wheat to make flour by hand, they used the power of a flowing river to turn a grind stone.  

They also made tools called calculators to help them count.  It’s important to count money, cargo, and your blessings! 

Some of the things I work with my customers on is how to help them count their money, their time, and all the little details that help them run their business.  Computers are really just fancy calculators.  Numbers are nice, but most people like to see their numbers visualized so they can think about them easier.  Here’s an example of your day:

About 250 years ago, people discovered that you could burn coal to power even more powerful engines. Coal, gasoline, and nuclear are food for machines.  Machines can help us get a lot more work done!

People soon realized that these engines that were used for moving trains could also be used to make electricity.  Electricity is a big concept.  Think of water flowing through a pipe.  Electricity flows the same way through conductive (usually metal) surfaces and makes energy.  Lightning is an example of electricity, and a lightbulb is like a safe way to bottle electricity to give us light.  Before lightbulbs, people used candles or just sat in the dark!  

OK, so we’ve covered a lot!  People are using all of these tools, machines, and technologies to make things like medicine, cars, and toys.  Companies who make lots of the same thing over are called manufacturers.  These people make things in big buildings called factories that have electricity, big machines that help them make their stuff, rules for working, and lots of computers to help all this. 

What you need to make computers work:

Let’s tie it all together.  

People work together to make cool things.  People work best when they have the best information.  Daddy helps manufacturers tie lots of different sources of computer information together.  These systems use rules to track money, workers, trucks, and how happy customers are.  In the past, people would have to go hunting for this information and it would take a lot of time to find the right answers in time.  Now, these people don’t have to do that and they can do more fun work! 

Here’s one way to imagine all this - can you find the fastest way through the maze while collecting all the treasure? 

Seems Pretty Good, but what if I told you that 2 of the treasure chests had poop in them?  What a gross waste of time!   

Daddy helps people use their computers better to make sure that they can do the best work possible.  They can focus on finding treasure instead of poop. 

These people have lots of computer programs that don’t talk to each other very well, so we show them that there is a way to make them talk and a way to make their jobs better.  Computers are still a pretty new tool and they are changing very quickly, so people need lots of help in this area.  

People also get used to using old tools, so a lot of what I do is change people’s minds about what’s possible.  Old tools are great, and we still make fires the old fashioned way too.  Change is hard, and too much change too soon can be overwhelming.  I help show people that better things are possible.  If they spend a little bit of money with me now, then they can make a lot more money soon!  

Here’s the cool thing: you are valuable and you have a good family.  We’re here to create a home where you can pick what you want to do.  It will be useful and valuable to your community.  It’s a really special time to be alive and your work will be crazy different and crazy fun!