For some reason, it was assumed until comparitively recently -- and without any evidence whatsoever -- that homo sapiens had stopped evolving. This would have made man exceptional among all other species and quite when this unique event was supposed to have taken place has been totally unexplained. However, it is still a fact that any new feature of the environment, if it is permanent and consistently applied over a few generations, will exert a selective effect on any species, either to enhance or to deplete its innate abilities.

The events which greatly affected the evolution of man were undoubtedly the succession of ice ages which repeatedly cooled and dried the forest environments of Africa, pushing him out into the vastly more dangerous -- and less fertile savannahs -- where predators abounded and the previous predominant diet of fruit and nuts was nowhere near so abundant. One result of this consistent pressure over millions of years was to select for intelligence, the prime feature of which was the growth of the frontal lobes.

However, when man had substantially reduced the populations of large grazing animals all over Eurasia and had to adopt agriculture as a consequence, the selection pressure for intelligence would have been greatly eased because the vast majority of the population would not have been living on the edge of daily survival as before, but were carrying out fairly simple tasks of tilling the soil or shepherding sheep. To some extent, individuals with more than average intelligence would have been needed for the production of craft goods and also for the services needed by the retinues of the secular and religious leaders of the small city-states from about 10,000BC onwards. However, the general level of intelligence would not have needed to be as high as in hunter-gatherer times nor could there have been any chance of high-intelligence castes becoming permanent. The architecture of the brain needs a great many genes and their random redistribution every generation would have predomimated over any particular selection effect. It is highly likely that the general level of intelligence would have been drifting downwards during most of man's existence since about 10-5,000BC.

There is one possible exception to this generally non-selective situation and this would have been along sea coasts where there was much opportunity for trade. Along these coasts, where trade was much easier and cheaper than in the deep interior of Eurasia there would probably have been much more competition for higher quality status goods and thus there might have been a significant check to any incipient decline in intelligence. It might be for this reason that the IQ of people who live along south-east Asian sea coasts and in adjoining islands is still higher today than elsewhere in the world -- at around 105 compared with the mean IQ for Europe at 100. However, wherever man lived at the furthest extremities of his world-wide migrations (e.g. in Tasmania, or Patagonia), his IQ was significantly less than that of Europeans. However, apart from this geographical effect, there could have been no other significant selection for intelligence among the vast majority of agricultural or pastoral man.

However, the industrial revolution and the requirements for higher and higher skills within the population would have initiated strong effects -- gradual at first, and then accelerating from the time of the western enlightenment in the 17th century and onwards. There would still have been redistributive effects from generation to generation -- so that, for example, the IQ of the great-great-grandchildren of a pair of geniuses are likely to become similar to the mean of the population -- unless the speed of technological change is fast enough to overtake them.

It is in this situation that I believe we find ourselves today. The pace of technological change is quickening and the requirements for higher and higher skill jobs is increasing. I have already given some intimation elsewhere ("095. The mitotic age") that an intelligence- and skill-gap is already arising in the most developed countries already. At least, I am convinced about this in the England, the one country I claim to keep my eye on more than most!

The following news item about a recent survey into the use of the Internet suggests that 41% of the population over 14 are non-users. The breakdown of the reasons given why they don't use the Internet is shown as a pie-chart in the Economist which reported it. I show it here as a simple table:

Non-users of the Internet, May-June 2003:

"Indifferent" - 44% (these could be proxy users of the Internet but choose not to be)

"Proxy users" -- 22% (occasionally ask others to go online on their behalf)

"Refuseniks" -- 17% (actively reject the Internet)

"Passive" -- 17% (cannot be proxy users, but do not mind)

However, about 20% of the population are largely illiterate anyway, and because the Internet is still predominantly a literary medium, then this would probably account for approximately half of those who don't use the Internet, but didn't want to give the real reason for their embarrassment to those who carried out the survey. However, be that as it may, the fact remains that, in the two decades since the development of the Internet and in which sales of personal computers took off quicker than for any other consumer good in history (except for perhaps children's playstations), the number of purchasers stabilised very quickly, leaving almost half the population as not interested. No doubt a significant percentage of non-users are old people who don't want to learn new tricks. However, as these die, it is likely that the percentage of personal computers will rise a little and the percentage of those using the Internet will also increase somewhat. But the suspicion remains that there will still be a sizeable chunk of the population for whom the Internet has no appeal or is too complicated to use.

I suggest that this is yet another indication of the intelligence gap that is now forming within developed countries' population. At the end of the day, the evolutionary effects will depend on the differential birth rates of those who are in jobs and those who are not, and there is, at present, no evidence as to what the respective birth rates may turn out to be. We are at present in a general downturn in fertility but I know of no statistics that differentiate between the social classes.

Thus, just as occurred in the period of several million years up to the emergence of homo sapiens, strong selective effects for intelligence might well resume. I am not suggesting that there will be any early indication of significant growth in the size of our brains! But I think that there might well be a culling of the less intelligent in the world population. I do not condone this, nor could it be justified by any sort of political programme but, considering the looming demise of our oil-based economic systems and the need to develop much more sophisticated ones, requiring higher levels of technological skills both to invent and to manage them, then we might see the resumption of what has always been an entirely natural process of the selection of the fittest according to the circumstances of the times.

Keith Hudson

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THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

INTERNET? NO THANKS

A new survey questions the notion of a digital divide

Despite the government's enthusiasm for the internet, and its many action plans, frameworks, guidelines and policies for getting Britain online, two in five Britons still do not use the internet. Why not? According to a new survey, it is not that non-users can't afford or don't understand it -- they'rejust not interested.

Britain is behind America, but ahead of most of Europe, in getting online. Numbers are increasing, but only slowly. "Government and commerce will have to wait a generation or more before nine-tenths of Britons regularly use the internet," declares Richard Rose of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), a university-sponsored body, which earlier this summer carried out a survey of unwired Britain.

The survey found that 41% of Britons aged 14 and over do not use the internet. These non-users were more likely than users to be old and poor. But with internet access available in public libraries, cybercafes, job centres and even telephone boxes, age and income alone do not explain non- users' reluctance to go online. So the survey included special questions for non-users, to shed some more light on the subject.

It turns out that 22% of non-users are "proxy users" who have asked friends or relatives to do something online on their behalf (such as buy a book or send an e-mail) but see no reason to get connected themselves. A further 44% of non-users were classified as "informed and indifferent". They know they could use the internet at a library, a cafe or a friend's house if they wanted to, but choose not to. A further 17% are "passive"-they do not know anyone who could do things online on their behalf, but do not mind. Only 17% of non-users are actively anti-technology. When asked if they felt disadvantaged by their non-use of the internet, some non-users said they thought it might count against them at work, but 96% said no.

That people are happy to remain non-users, even when access is available, illustrates that not using the internet is a life-style choice, not a form of social deprivation. Many people are used to doing things the old-fashioned paper-based way and see little reason to change, says Mr Rose, who oversaw the study. "People who don't use the internet haven't been convinced that it's useful...They just don't see the point of it." Rather than a digital divide between users and non-users, he says, there is a "digital choice".

This means that even if the government meets its self-imposed target of putting all government services online by 2005, many people will still not want to use them. The government attributes non-use of the internet to lack of access or lack of skills. But the real problem appears to be lack of interest. That said, all this internet apathy might have a silver lining. The government has also set itself the goal of making internet access available to everyone who wants it by 2005. That target appears to have been reached already.

Economist 20 September 2003

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