Historical Evidence and a Big Idea

I heard Jaron Lanier demonstrate the effectiveness of expounding a thesis with a historical example. I'm still thinking about the actual ramifications of his thesis here, but because he used the metaphor he did, I have a better chance of understanding it and accepting at least parts of it. (I bolded the middle sentence.)

"Language started out as what we call a multi-modal phenomenon in the brain where the control of the throat and the lungs and this creation of sound and hearing tied in with meaning and semantics and this new center of expertise was created in the brain, kind of between areas that were specialized for these other things. It's my opinion that something like that is waiting to be enjoyed within the brain is waiting to be enjoyed for somatic* intelligence...My suspicion is that this capacity is already there but underutilized...This is, I think the big picture of user interface research. User-interface is not just about decreasing hassle and increasing pleasure. It's a voyage of discovery about who people are and who people can be...The metaphor I'd like to make is to the age of the discovery of continents. But in this case the continents are parts of the brain that are underutilized, or combinations of parts of the brain that are underexplored.What we're doing is we're travelling across the cortex--hopefully with better intent than the conquistadores--and we're discovering new continents of human potential.."

See his whole address here: (I pulled these comments from around the 18 minute mark.)

*somatic means "of the body, especially distinct from the mind." I had to look it up.

Since I believe in the creation of humanity by divine design, I think Jaron Lanier's explanation of the origin of language is wrong. (All scientists need to accept anyway that the farther back (or forward) in time that we extrapolate the more we are guessing about our conclusions.) Still, I don't want to dismiss the idea wholly because it appears to have the mark of genius, and if so, then we can use the idea for something good. His hope that the future of humanity includes new worlds of creativity, new forms of multi-modal interaction, is an exciting and a good one. We have all the functionality that is required for an effective experience in mortality, but after that? Perhaps God will teach us wonderful new ways of functioning in some future eon.