From: Mikko Särelä (msarela@cc.hut.fi)
Date: Fri Apr 28 2006 - 16:16:38 MDT
On Fri, 28 Apr 2006, Richard Loosemore wrote:
> All previous technologies provided us with something that did not
> substantially change the nature of the discovery process itself. A
> better steam shovel could never cause any individual creative genius to
> suddenly acquire the ability to invent things at ten, a hundred, or a
> thousand times the rate that she was inventing things before the steam
> shovel came along.
You are forgetting the printing press, which revolutionized the process of
discovery and created modern science. And quickened the pace of
development.
> Now *that* is not business as usual. For the first time, the technology
> changes the generator of new technology. Never happened before. Not just
> more of the same, but a whole new ball game.
It used to be in the history that within a human life little changed. No
new technologies could be expected within a single person's lifetime
(changes in the stone age were very, very slow). Things are already so
much different from what they were ten thousand years ago, or even a
thousand years ago, when you're talking about the rate of change.
- Mikko
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