Humans make tools: it is one of our defining characteristics. But our tools shape us, just as we shape our tools. If, like me, you don’t usually do a physically demanding job, try using a hammer for a few hours, and experience the blisters that it raises. Try using it for a few more days, and feel your calluses and other changes in your body.

Researchers now believe that our hands have been shaped by our history of tool use. Early human species (always remember that Homo sapiens is not the only, or the first, species of human) had weak wrists and clumsy digits compared to modern humans. The development of stone tools, and their impact on prospects of survival, meant that, from approximately 1.7 million years ago, the structure and strength of our hands evolved to get better at using tools. Our tools wrote themselves back into our DNA.

I didn’t learn to drive a car until I was in my mid-twenties, and I found it difficult. It took me three attempts to pass my test, and a lot longer before I was a confident driver. But, as well as teaching me how to drive, the experience taught me the difference between reasoning and reflex: the difference between knowing what you should do, and doing it automatically due to muscle memory.

Later, I learnt the management lesson that, when we acquire new skills, especially those with a physical component, we pass through phases of unconscious incompetence (we don’t know what to do), conscious incompetence (we know what to do but we can’t do it), conscious competence (we know what to do, and we can do it when we think about it), and unconscious competence (we know what to do, and we do it automatically).

I’ve been overwhelmed by new technology many times in my life.

When I got my first microcomputer as a teenager, there was very little to help me make sense of it, other than the manual that it came with, some computer magazines, and the efforts of my friends, who were trying to understand their own computers. This new language seemed like a wall of gibberish, with no way to gain purchase.

When I first moved from a corporate environment to a startup environment in the dot com era, I realised that there was a whole new web based technology stack that had sprung up while I wasn’t paying attention, and that I needed to learn in order to lead my team effectively. The skills I had learnt over years of professional work suddenly felt obsolete.

Have you ever been introduced to someone then, five minutes into the conversation, realised that you can’t remember their name? If you have never had this experience, then you have a better memory than mine. Whenever that happens, it feels as if you have a window of acceptable ignorance -  a period during which it’s embarrassing but not disastrous to admit your lapse of memory. But, as time goes on, you can feel that window expiring: it becomes more and more awkward to ask the person’s name.

It can feel like this in enterprise technology too: we hear about new technologies, trends and terms every day, and there’s a period during which it seems fine to admit that you don’t understand, and to ask people to explain. But then the new concepts are everywhere, and everybody seems to using them with confidence. How did you get left out? Is it okay to say ‘I don’t understand’ now, or is it too late?

I have to admit that I felt like this for a while with the concept of machine learning.