Plain old complex reasoning isn't all that special anymore—we're almost into the second decade since IBM's Deep Blue machine won a regulation chess match against reigning world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

Even the ability to recognize (or make) and use tools is no longer considered a hallmark of uniquely human intelligence—not only other primates, but many species of birds use physical objects in ways that enhance native abilities.

But foresight—the inclination to envision possibility and take action to be ready for it, even at the expense of a near-term cost—is a defining human trait, isn't it? Well, maybe not.

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Writing in the May 19 issue of Science, Nicholas Mulcahy and Josep Call at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany, reported that two different species of apes showed the ability to select an appropriate tool 14 hours before the occasion that it would be needed—and to transport that tool to another location, thereby preventing its removal by someone else before the time that they would need it themselves.

"That's pretty smart," I found myself thinking as I read this, and then wondered: Do people consistently demonstrate the same kind of intelligence? Unfortunately, I can think of a good many counterexamples.

It's a cliché, for example, to observe that people don't think about repairing a leaky roof at times when it isn't raining. A roof is not a tool in the same sense as a hammer or a screwdriver, but it's still a kind of artifact that makes our environment behave differently—so as to make us safer and more comfortable.

Fixing the roof when it's convenient to do so, instead of needing the reminder of a dripping sound in the middle of the night, seems like a behavior that would demonstrate a pretty basic kind of intelligence—and yet it's common to joke that no one does it.

Putting this in a more typical context for this column, we're now in the throes of one of the big retail seasons for PCs—the Dad and Grad period, as gadget outlets call it. We have a downright anthropological opportunity to look at the tool selection behaviors of supposedly higher primates—the kind who use credit cards and Web browsers. Observe their process of choosing between one piece of computing equipment and another, and you'll see that running the games that they like to play appears to be one of their main criteria.

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My earlier subject of leaking roofs brings to mind the question of whether Dad and Grad PC buyers are making thoughtful tool selections based on the likelihood—nay, the inevitability—of hard disk failure or other data loss, whether due to wear and tear or to various forms of human error or malice. Will buyers look at one PC versus another and note, for example, that one has a built-in flash-memory card socket, encouraging the user to maintain a conveniently fast and easily removable backup copy of what may well be irreplaceable data? Graduation photos, for example?

Or will those buyers spend their money on larger and brighter displays, perhaps envisioning themselves enjoying those pictures or home videos that they're not prepared to invest in protecting? People, please: Quit monkeying around. Stop saving money today in ways that will bite you tomorrow—when it's too late to make a better plan.

This admonition readily scales up to enterprise-level concerns. Technologies need to be chosen in the expectation that they'll have to accommodate growth and that they'll have to provide at least partial function under non-ideal conditions. Systems will fail: Be prepared to contain the damage. Security attacks will succeed: Be prepared to determine what happened and who did it, and to prove it.

Choose tools that will solve the problems you're going to have, as well as the ones you have right now. Don't merely ape the act of IT planning.

Peter Coffee can be reached at peter_coffee@ziffdavis.com.

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This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.