Countless innovations delivered immense benefits and privileges.

The printing press accelerated the growth and transmission of knowledge.

The greatest privilege is that each generation inherits the achievements of those who came before it.

The word privilege has somehow increasingly evolved linguistically to be viewed negatively. It has also come to imply an unearned advantage or an unfair benefit held by one group at another's expense.

Throughout human history, privilege has meant something quite different: privilege has emerged when individuals and/or groups apply merit, achievement, competence, and excellence in ways that expand possibilities for everyone. I refer to this as the MACE Principle.

Research shows that high levels of expertize and exceptional performance emerge through sustained practice, learning, and skill refinement rather than arising spontaneously. In this sense, such accomplishments and the benefits they create for subsequent generations are among the oldest features of human civilization (Ericsson, 2008; Srivastava & Das, 2015).

The Collective Gained a Privilege

Nearly three million years ago, our distant ancestors fashioned the first stone tools. The first person to shape stone into a cutting implement created something far more significant than a simple object. That innovation gave the entire group a practical advantage.

The collective also gained a privilege. The tribe could now cut hunted and gathered food and, self-evidently, share their food far more efficiently and much more quickly. Survival itself became easier.

Consequently, the privilege created by that stone-tool innovation was not confined to the inventor; it became a significant benefit and privilege enjoyed by the collective (Kivell, 2015; Stout, 2011).

The same pattern recurs throughout history. The invention of the wheel transformed transport and trade. Once developed, the wheel's benefits and the privilege it created extended far beyond its creator.

Entire communities far removed from the original invention gained the privilege of moving goods and people more efficiently. What began as an achievement of human ingenuity became a shared privilege and an immense social advantage beyond its original location (Kivell, 2015; Stout, 2011).

Perhaps no invention demonstrates this process more dramatically than the printing press. Developed in the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, within the Holy Roman Empire (present-day Germany), the printing press fundamentally altered humanity's relationship with the development and advancement of knowledge.

Reading, writing, collective information, ideas, and knowledge, once largely confined to a comparatively small number of individuals, could now be reproduced, preserved, and distributed on a scale that was never before possible.

Reading and writing........

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