I remember a conversation with cultural anthropologist Edward T. Hall, who pointed out to me that the most significant, the most critical inventions of man were not those ever considered to be inventions, but those that appeared to be innate and natural. To illustrate the point, he told the story of a group of cavemen. . . . One day, while sitting around the fire, one of the men said, "Guess what? We're talking." Silence. The others looked at him with suspicion. "What is talking?" one of them asked. "It's what we're all doing. Right now. We're talking." "You're crazy," another man replied. "Who ever heard of such a thing?" . . . And it became a question of "who's crazy?" The group could not see or understand because "talking" was invented by the first man.

John Brockman, About Bateson