"Neoteny"

The Meaning of Neoteny

Joichi Ito first wrote this on Jul 30, 2002.  Neoteny was an Internet investment firm that Joi founded in 2000. It has since completed investing and functions as a holding company for the portfolio of investments.   Neoteny Labs has successfully acquired the rights to use the “Neoteny” name from the inactive firm.

Many people ask me what Neoteny means. It means the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood. I first heard it from Timothy Leary when we were working on a book together. (It was called “The New Breed” about the techno youth culture. We never finished it, but I still have a pile of notes. Maybe I should get around to publishing some of it someday…). Tim loved the word. He used it to mean all of the great things that you often lose in adulthood such as curiosity, playfulness, imagination, joy, humor, wonder, etc. It is a biology term that the people in evolutionary theory use when discussing traits that we retain in adulthood like lack of body hair, etc. There is a good web site about Neoteny at www.neoteny.org.

Adulthood in the past meant that you finished learning most of what you needed to learn and you switched to production mode and started focusing on repeating tasks and narrowing your focus. I think that with the amount of change in the world today, it is impossible to “grow up” and finish your learning. I think Neoteny will become more and more of a survival trait in the future.

On the other hand, Neoteny means some strange things as well. It is sometimes used in the context of sexual preferences, stunted growth and other problems. When Jun was joining Neoteny and he asked a high school student whether they knew what Neoteny was and the student said, “Giant tadpoles”. So, there are pros and cons.

When I say Neoteny on the phone, it is often mistaken for “New Otani”. There was a company callled Neonagy (ne is roots, onaji means “same” so they meant “our roots are all the same” in Japanese.) and many people make mistakes and call us “Neotony”. But, I think that as the world starts to focus on biotech, I’m glad I picked this name instead of e-blahblahblah, i-blahblahblah, Netblahblahblah, blahblahblah.com or blahblahblah incubator. ;-)

Neoteny, and the future of Homo Sapiens

A short contribution from Victor Serebriakoff.  Victor (17 Oct 1912 – 1 Jan 2000) was one of the early members and a leading light of Mensa.  Serebriakoff is known for his contributions to lumber technology, writing Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests, as well as organizing and promoting Mensa.

Neoteny describes the fact of evolution, that the new species emerge from the form of the young of the evolving species. The hominids arose from the Bonono or chimpanzee stage because their young stayed young longer, they remained experimental, playful and whimsical for longer and longer. There is, with homo sapiens, a developmental pause at the age of three which continues until the sudden changes of puberty. Homo has the longest period of immaturity of any creature on Earth. It is almost two decades from the stage of an almost helpless, senseless and completely dependent baby until the fully developed adult.

And this tendency appears to continue. We may notice that while most of humanity stop play and begin to work most of the daytime in their early twenties and play only in their spare time, there is a significant minority who continue to play all the time. They are usually the most gifted and talented, they become scholars, students and artists and occupy themselves with tasks for which their is no immediate substantial gain for themselves, intellectual tasks in fact. This is a continuation of childish behaviour and that minority contains all the intelligentsia. With the development of automation, the increase of prosperity and the availability of unlimited energy, the proportion of the neotenous minority will increase until it become a majority, I believe.

Neoteny

Joichi Ito wrote this for Seth Godin’s free ebook, “What Matters Now”, which was published online on Dec 14, 2009.

Neoteny is the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood. Human beings are younger longer than any other creature on earth, taking almost twenty years until we become adults. While we retain many our childlike attributes into adulthood most of us stop playing when we become adults and focus on work.

When we are young, we learn, we socialize, we play, we experiment, we are curious, we feel wonder, we feel joy, we change, we grow, we imagine, we hope.

In adulthood, we are serious, we produce, we focus, we fight, we protect and we believe in things strongly.

The future of the planet is becoming less about being efficient, producing more stuff and protecting our turf and more about working together, embracing change and being creative.

We live in an age where people are starving in the midst of abundance and our greatest enemy is our own testosterone driven urge to control our territory and our environments.

It’s time we listen to children and allow neoteny to guide us beyond the rigid frameworks and dogma created by adults.

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