Speed is the key to the Third Evolution

On 14th May 1610, at 4pm, Ravaillac assassinated Henri IV, the king of France, rue de la Ferronerie in Paris.  The historian Michel Cassan studied the urban archives in 240 towns in France. He found that the towns that were along the postal network setup by Sully received this important piece of information on the same day. By 21st May, all towns in France had been hit by the news (7 days later).  On Wednesday 8th September, news of the king's death arrived in Mexico, via Spain, more than 3 months later.

 

Ravaillac killing King Henry IV. Painting by Gustave Charles Housez

Compare the speed of transmission of information in 1610 to the instantaneous coverage of Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong's first step onto the Moon on July 20, 1969. Billions of people on Earth saw that event all at the same time. 

In the 21st century, most information takes less than 150 milliseconds to circulate around the Earth.

This is what Buskes calls a fundamental difference/advantage of the Third Evolution over the Second Evolution: 

"Apart from the different trajectories, there might also be significant differences in speed by which cultural information is transmitted. In small prehistoric populations of hunter–gatherers the mode of transmission was probably mainly vertical and one to-few, resulting in a relatively slow stream of information and a corresponding sluggish pace of evolution. In our modern world, however, the situation has dramatically changed. With the advent of writing, printing, the internet and the social media, the mode has changed from predominantly vertical and one-to-few to horizontal and one-to-many, resulting in an ever-increasing flow of information
racing around the globe with lightning speed."

This difference is not better intrinsically, but it means the Third Evolution takes over, as speed has become a key adaptation feature.

Ref: 

Michel Cassan, La grande peur de 1610. Les Français et l’assassinat d’Henri IV, 2010

Patrick Boucheron, L’histoire Mondiale de la France, sous la direction de, Seuil 2017, Stéphane Van Damme, p. 292

Darwinizing Culture: Pitfalls and Promises, by Chris Buskes, about Peter J. Richerson and Morten H. Christiansen (eds): Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. The MIT
Press, Cambridge, MA, 2013, 485 pp, ISBN: 978-0-262-01975-0