The first evidence of the use of bricks was found in what is today the land of war and destruction, in Tell Aswad, a ten thousand year-old settlement near Damascus, Syria. Mathematics also emerged in the same time and region where the brick was invented at the dawn of human civilization – curiously both share a common idea.

Like numbers in mathematics, we produce bricks by splitting up the formerly continuous fabric of the material world to form identical units, which can then be used to create constructions never seen before. Brick is the simple example of how the universe can be understood and put to use. It’s a witness of a period where evolution and technology intersect.

Ray Kurzweil said we are rapidly growing more intimate with our technology. Except, from where I see it, technology is not ‘ours’. We ought not think of the symbiosis with technology as a solely human achievement, because it seems to be the result of life itself moving to overstep biological limitations to expand its horizon.