レナード・リード「われはエンピツ」('I, Pencil')

通勤読書で楽しんでいるマット・リドリーの The Evolution of Everything で言及されていたエッセイ:

• Leonard Reed, "I, Pencil" 

検索してみると，訳しているえらい方がいらっしゃった：

• 「わたくし，鉛筆」（kurakenyaのつれづれ日記，2011年1月27日）

リドリーの言及箇所：

... A century later, an economist named Leonard Reed in an essay called 'I, Pencil', made the point that this is also true of technology. It is indeed the case that in order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it. Among the myriad people who contribute to the manufacture of a simple pencil, from graphite miners and lumberjacks to assembply-line workers and managers, not to mention those who grow the coffee that each of these drinks, there is not one person who knows how to make a pencil from scratch. The knowledge is held in the cloud, between brains, rather than in any individual head. This is one of the reasons, I shall argue in a later chapter, that technology evolves too. 

おなじくリドリーの TED Talk:

• 「アイディアがセックスするとき」("When Ideas Have Sex")