Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) co-founder Steve Jobs once framed humanity’s edge over apes and other high primates in simple terms: people build tools, then use those tools to outrun their own limits.

Jobs Saw Bicycles As Proof Of Human Advantage

In interviews from the early 1980s, Jobs described reading a Scientific American study that measured how efficiently different species moved. The condor, he said, used the least energy to travel a kilometer, while humans made “a rather unimpressive showing,” ranking about a third of the way down the list.

The twist came when the study added a person on a bicycle. Jobs said the rider “blew the condor away,” moving far beyond nature’s original ranking. To Jobs, that was the point of technology. Humans were not merely tool users. They created instruments that could “dramatically amplify our innate human abilities.”