Pre-20th Century Gadgetery 104
The Byelorussian Hatter writes "Wired, presumably bored to death of Cellphones, Zunes, MairBook Nacs and what-have-you, looks back at the elegant inventions of a less civilized age. 'The Turk was a chess player concealed in a table packed with cogs and gears, contrived to give the appearance of a mighty chess-playing machine. Atop the table, an articulated automaton would be seen to make the moves determined by the master within. One of the 18th and 19th century's many illustrious hoaxes, the Turk is perhaps the greatest gadget that wasn't.'"
Makes you relize (Score:4, Insightful)
After all, I still have yet to welcome our matter to energy and back converting overlords...
Call me weird, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
less civilized? (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably the Middle Ages... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Call me weird, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes you relize (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I realized that it isn't me doing any of those things. Someone else built my heating and cooling system, and my plumbing, and ventilation. I'm really no better than a caveman--I just found a much nicer cave to move into.
Re:Probably the Middle Ages... (Score:3, Insightful)
2 million a year is kind of a big deal when it comprises THREE TO FOUR PERCENT of the european population at the time. It would be equivalent to almost 22 million people dying in europe per year today.
Re:less civilized? (Score:4, Insightful)
As for inhuman weapons - Depends on what you mean by inhuman, before the invention of antibotics countless millions of walking war wounded died a slow and horrible death.
Re:Makes you relize (Score:2, Insightful)
Electronics is just the only survivor in a world of many species. The idea of processing information by itself is (indeed) not new. But many machines have been invented in the past that didn't make it. Then electronics is fast, tiny and can be mass produced for almost nothing. That's why this technology survived and information processing with water, gears, relais, and torque amplifiers did not.
The same holds for flying cars. The idea is an old one. And the only solution we have so far is to attach four propellers to it. Which, I think, is a species that is dead to begin with. But you can learn from it.
And you're right about ideas as 'very few good ideas are truly novel'. But having an idea is often not that hard. As is the first proof of concept. Creating something really useful is. Expressing this as 'an extension of simpler ideas' I think is wrong. Because this is the part were all the work is done.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you have your 'ages' mixed up, for example stone henge was built with stone age tech and the people who built it lived in thatched roundhouses, some up to 60' in diameter, they had pens for domesticated animals. Indoor heating and light came from a central fire and the roof had no hole since smoke passed straight thru the thatch.
There is no denying life was brutally uncomfortable (particularly in cold climates like the UK), but stone age man was intellectually no different to modern man. Even Neanderthals were more advanced than the picture you paint and they were a different species. Stone age people simply thought religion and science were the same thing, and a large chunk of humanity still thinks exactly the same way.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern office workers (still present today in various locations around the world) spend approximately 1/3 of their day working so they can pay for their food--just surviving.
Re:Makes you relize (Score:4, Insightful)
People like to think they individually know substantially more than their ancestors, while in reality they just know different things. Medieval peasants knew how to slaughter a cow: we don't. We know how to operate a microwave: they didn't. Only collectively we clearly know more.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Prehistory is even categorised by the achievements of nerds, only when some geek decided to find out what happen when you stuck funny looking rocks in a very hot fire did the stone age become the bronze age. Sure being a prehistoric nerd would have been hard work, but rest assured, there were plenty of them, and its thanks to those uber nerds who decided they could represent spoken words using little squiggles on paper that prehistory finally ended.
Re:Makes you relize (Score:2, Insightful)
but is any of this really that far from clockmaking? Its all just extensions of simplier ideas. Clockmaking extends from the idea of gears. All eletronics extend from the idea of harnessing eletricity.. when will we enter a phase where we seek new mediums to harness? Instead of becoming masters of electrons, we master all energy and matter.
But what do you mean by "new mediums"? If you say that modern electronics is just like clockmaking, wouldn't in the future someone still say than mastering all energy and matter is still just like clockmaking?
Modern electronics harnesses electricity, and requires understanding of quantum mechanics, both things which are fundamentally different to clockmaking. We have harnessed the nuclear force to some degree (albeit not in a "gadget"). The only force still a mystery to us is gravity. I do not see why everything we know today is just like clockmaking, but a future device that harnesses gravitation would be some fundamental new breakthrough.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sources? I'm a "modern office worker", and I know I only spend a few (2 to 2.5) hours a week earning money for food. That's 6.25% of my working hours (assuming a 40-hour week), and just 2.23% of my waking hours (taking a "day" as 16 hours, with eight hours for sleep). Even at minimum wage -- less than a typical office worker can expect to get -- the cost of essential food should only be about 20% (1/5) of waking hours. Also, a lot more emphasis is placed on attributes -- preservation, individual taste preferences, variety -- which are mostly unavailable in those hunter-gatherer societies at any price.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure that any who wish to have a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the modern world could accomplish it with far less than a 40 hour work week.