11 ms·

The most disruptive technology of the last century was home appliances

112 points by davidiach 11y ago

JDDunn9 11y ago
Chapter 4 of "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism" echoed this point titled, "The Washing Machine has Changed the World More than the Internet Has". In addition to talking about how revolutionary household appliances have been, he also mentioned how economists have consistently failed to measure much economic value in the Internet.
varjag 11y ago
One big non-appliance thing here is the proliferation of mobile phones. Am pretty sure months of my productive life have been saved simply by excluding waiting around on people and not making unnecessary trips.
jasode 11y ago
Hans Rosling presented a similar topic at TED (2010): http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_... On the other hand, we may overestimate the disruption of home appliances because of how history played out. Today, many poor villagers choose to spend what little money they have on a cellphone instead of a washing machine. They continue to wash clothes by hand and hang them to dry but they absolutely need the cellphone to tell them what price their crops will sell for at the market.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  The article is about last century. Smartphones are this century's invention. However, both appliances and mobile tech only show how significant and underestimated the effect of technology on society is. We like to think that technology is just some weird addition or convenience, but it seems to me that it is technological advancements that fundamentally transform society.
  - jasode 11y ago
    > Smartphones are this century's invention. If you notice, I had deliberately used the word "cellphone" instead of "smartphone". Cellphones (1980s) were 20th century technology. Many poor villagers don't have smartphones but they do have cellphones.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Right. My misread, I apologize. The reason I read 'smartphone' instead of 'cellphone' is that they're related to an observation I find important - that smartphones are actually essential tools for the poor. Internet access gives significant quality of life improvements.
      - cm2187 11y ago
        Cellphones only took off in the late 90s. They are not really 80s technology, at least for poor peasans.
      - Retric 11y ago
        You could use the internet on a web on a phone in late 90's. The post 2000 smartphone was more an evolution than a specific capability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_browser EX: BlackBerry 850 (1999) was very email centric.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        You could, but the Internet in mid-to-late 90's was nothing like it looks today. I still remember WAP browsers and this was not something useful for general population in a way smartphones and the Internet of today are. Western corporate businessmen did AFAIK had some use for it though.
    - blaincate 11y ago
      I was in india till 2001 and very few people in urban areas has cellular phone. Even in US during studies, very few students had cell phones (2001-2002). The advent of cellphone is definitely from 2000 (not before). atleast my experience. a found a link to support my observation: http://www.cartesian.com/the-rise-of-mobile-phones-20-years-of-global-adoption/ http://www.cartesian.com/the-rise-of-mobile-phones-20-years-...
qrendel 11y ago
It's incidental (for me) that this article should be posted today. Only two days ago, in a philosophy class on environmental ethics, I was told by the professor that my answer to a discussion prompt on "ecofeminism," which cited the development of the washing machine as facilitating the women's rights movement, would be disagreed with by feminists and that it reflected my worldview that it was women's "essential role in life to do laundry." The counterargument was that World War 2 had been responsible for women entering the workforce and not household electrical appliances. My rebuttal that this may not explain global demographic data from developing countries has thus far gone unanswered. Apologies for the personal anecdote, but needless to say I'm still a bit offended at having been called a bigot. Particularly when Ana Swanson, a "reporter for Wonkblog specializing in business, economics, data visualization and China" would probably not have been similarly told that by writing this article she believes housework is women's essential role in life. It seems some would require extensive quantitative evidence for this claim to avoid stepping on any toes, though, and I wonder if Hans Rosling, Ha-Joon Chang, Max Roser and the others making it have quantified to what extent appliances were an influence compared to other factors.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Personally I'm starting to believe in a limited form of something I heard called 'technological determinism' - that it's the technology that shapes society. Your washing machine would be an example. Another would be seeing civil rights movement as enabled by the printing press.
  - MIKarlsen 11y ago
    That is not technological determinism. Technological determinism would suggest that this happens WITHOUT OUR SOCIAL WORLDS BEING ABLE TO INTERVENE. I don't subscribe to this. Read this by Sally Wyatt - https://prezi.com/x06bsuq4an_o/technological-determinism-is-dead-long-live-technological-determinism/ https://prezi.com/x06bsuq4an_o/technological-determinism-is-...
  - gearhart 11y ago
    Have you read Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media? Written in the 60s, explaining world phenomena from the perspective of "media" (which he uses to mean something very similar to "technology" - roads and the printing press both qualify) and accurately predicts the effect of the internet on society. Dense, but very worth reading if you're interested in macro societal change.
TorKlingberg 11y ago
What is strange to me is how the invention of home appliances seems to have stopped. The refrigerator, washing machine, vacuum and dishwasher all made huge changes to everyday life. But since the microwave oven, there has been nothing major. We are still spending many hours on household work. Are the remaining chores just to difficult to automate?
- pkorzeniewski 11y ago
  It's funny that on the one hand we'll soon have something as advanced as self-driving cars, and on the other we still need to iron our clothes, wipe off the dust and take garbage manually :)
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    It's not because of technology. We just tend to solve problems in order of how easy is to create a business model out of them.
    - joshontheweb 11y ago
      Trust me, there is a HUGE business model to be made out of washing and ironing clothes. Many who can afford it have maids to do this. If it was possible to automate these tasks it would be hugely valuable for the provider and the recipient.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Of course. The problem isn't the size, but the difficulty level of designing a successful business model.
      - jdhawk 11y ago
        Then build a traditional pickup and delivery laundry service with enough scale to offer competitive prices to in-home laundry services. Now you can have revenue to fund your R&D departments "automation" goals, increasing your margins...
dbuxton 11y ago
I'd love to see a study of these tech adoption trends and their effect in an even shorter timescale like in post-Soviet countries. In Russia even a few years ago, all my friends' parents would obsessively pickle the hell out of whatever they could grow. My impression is now that that tradition has almost disappeared among the younger generations.
- denis1 11y ago
  I'm from an East European country and can confirm that the pickle obsession seems to be a lot less relevant for the newer generations. But I think the cause for this is better access to western style supermarket chains and not technological.
  - scott_karana 11y ago
    Supermarkets are enabled both by refrigeration and by trucking. How is that not technological?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
amelius 11y ago
So many technological improvements, and we are still working 40+ hours per week...
- kefka 11y ago
  That's because we are being pushed back into the working conditions of a peasant. They worked because there wasn't enough time to do everything. And we're being worked because we cannot get enough money for the basics, like rent and food. Its another way of control.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  We're working 40+ hours a week. That's at a job. But when we come home, we're working less at home. That's still progress.
  - amelius 11y ago
    Well usually, one person was going to work, and the other person usually worked at home (doing laundry, etc.) Nowadays, two people have to work to pay the mortgage. Not really progress if you ask me.
osullivj 11y ago
Looking back it's amazing how little change there was through the twentieth century in fundamental consumer tech. Radio, TV, record players, fridges, washing machines & vacuum cleaners were all available in the 1930s. Sure, they became cheaper and more widely available, but IMHO, not much changed in home tech until the 1980s.
- hueving 11y ago
  They may have existed in some form but that doesn't mean they were good, widespread, or useful. It's like saying that since the first semiconductor was invented, nothing has really changed in computing tech.
  - marincounty 11y ago
    With the exception of the '80 most of these items lasted longer, were easily repairable, or made to be repaired. As a child, when my parents bought an appliance it was a big deal, and that appliance lasted. It was partially due to practical engineering, an emphasis on longevity, and my father who refused to spend his hard earned money on a new washing machine every two years. My father believed in 15 years durable goods. And so due I. (Yes--that's a fragment Mr. Taylor.) So appliances, I don't want your bells and whistles. I want an appliance that lasts. I want a service manual attached to the gizmo, along with the warranty information. I want an assurance of a few years of the availability of repair parts. I don't need, nor want to buy a new appliance every two years, but I know you have built it into your business cycle by now. Some of us see through the scam, and just aren't buying. Everything I said here, goes for any new automobile(gas, alt fuel, electric), but that might be a loosing fight? I can't believe how people buy automobiles. They buy them like they will never break down?
    - rmc 11y ago
      Are you willing to pay significantly more for your home appliances?
      - 11y ago
t_fatus 11y ago
Whant happens if you try to plot the relative improvement instead of absolute reduction of working hours? Because it's much more difficult to kill the remaining ones than the ones gained by the washing machine!
scottmcdot 11y ago
Why is the 'Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate' for women going down again?
- TorKlingberg 11y ago
  It could be lower US employment in general since the 2008 downturn.
anjc 11y ago
Agh I wish people would either read some of Christensen's work, or even the basic Wikipedia article, or else stop using the word 'disruptive' in this context. It's diluting a concept which used to have a very specific meaning, and has rapidly changed to mean nothing, through misuse. This article starts off by almost calling people out, saying that people use 'disruptive' in the wrong way, but then it proceeds to make the same basic errors. There are a few key characteristics of a disruptive innovation. One is that incumbents don't notice the changes due to market myopia. Were competitors to the vacuum unaware of the technical leaps possible due to technology? I will bet not. Another key characteristic is that it causes competitor value-networks to change. What value network changed by vacuums being adopted? The hitting-rug-with-stick value network? How much value flows through this network? Did the sweeping brush value network change? No, everyone still has a sweeping brush even now. All that happened was that consumer demands changed and a new product was adopted. But wasn't it still an amazing leap in technology? Yes! It was a 'radical innovation'! "Disruptive" does not mean "big change". It doesn't mean "impressive". It doesn't mean "unexpected competition". In this case, it doesn't mean "society changed over the course of a century as a new industry was created due to ancillary technological improvements". It certainly doesn't mean "normal dynamics of industry and competition", which is how most people seem to inexplicably use it.
ulrikrasmussen 11y ago
Also relevant: This[1] Nautilus article about how we have a tendency to over-estimate the significance of new technology in the future, simply because it is new. [1] http://nautil.us/issue/28/2050/why-futurism-has-a-cultural-blindspot http://nautil.us/issue/28/2050/why-futurism-has-a-cultural-b...
hudibras 11y ago
There's a beautiful chapter ("The Sad Irons") in Robert Caro's first volume of his Lyndon Johnson biography which describes life in rural Texas in the 1930s before they got electricity. Because all the electric appliances existed already, their world was transformed literally overnight when the switch was flipped and the juice started flowing.
encoderer 11y ago
What am I missing? The graph suggests only 1/3 of Americans had a water heater as of 1985?
- ghaff 11y ago
  Note that you don't need a discrete water heater to have hot water. I didn't have one in my current house until I got a new furnace a few years back. Multi-unit buildings may also have shared hot water heaters which may factor into the numbers as well.
ll123 11y ago
I think the most disruptive technology invented recently is effective birth control.
- rm999 11y ago
  Effective birth control isn't recent - it was a reasonably flourishing industry and concept by the 1850s (including rubber and skin condoms). American birth rates plummeted from 1800 to the mid 1800s because of this. Modern innovations have certainly made birth control more convenient, but I think the biggest changes have been social.
adwn 11y ago
This reminds me of a film from 1960, "The Home Of The Future: Year 1999 A.D." [1], where even more household chores are automated (for example, meals are delivered and stored frozen, and take only seconds to heat up). However, for some reason, the wife still stays at home (and goes shopping) while the husband works and pays the bills. This made me think that the only development which is harder to predict than technological progress, is sociocultural progress. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4
pseudonom- 11y ago
This thesis seems rather incomplete in light of: https://www.nber.org/digest/oct08/w13985.html https://www.nber.org/digest/oct08/w13985.html http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1975-07262-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1975-07262-001
Rainymood 11y ago
You know what has been one of the sickest revolutions ever? Ballpoint pens. Just let that sink in.
vonnik 11y ago
AKA robots that replaced human labor.
- anonbanker 11y ago
  sssshh. we're not supposed to talk about that.
jhallenworld 11y ago
As an owner of an older home I find the evolution of central heating to be fascinating. I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-Art-Steam-Heating/dp/0974396095 http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-Art-Steam-Heating/dp/09743960...
jhallenworld 11y ago
Where is the vibrator, the fifth home electrical appliance, on these graphs? :-) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/27/hysteria-and-the-long-strange-history-of-the-vibrator-vertical.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/27/hysteria-an...

112 points by davidiach 11y ago

Chapter 4 of "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism" echoed this point titled, "The Washing Machine has Changed the World More than the Internet Has". In addition to talking about how revolutionary household appliances have been, he also mentioned how economists have consistently failed to measure much economic value in the Internet.

varjag 11y ago

One big non-appliance thing here is the proliferation of mobile phones. Am pretty sure months of my productive life have been saved simply by excluding waiting around on people and not making unnecessary trips.

jasode 11y ago

Hans Rosling presented a similar topic at TED (2010): http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_... On the other hand, we may overestimate the disruption of home appliances because of how history played out. Today, many poor villagers choose to spend what little money they have on a cellphone instead of a washing machine. They continue to wash clothes by hand and hang them to dry but they absolutely need the cellphone to tell them what price their crops will sell for at the market.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
The article is about last century. Smartphones are this century's invention. However, both appliances and mobile tech only show how significant and underestimated the effect of technology on society is. We like to think that technology is just some weird addition or convenience, but it seems to me that it is technological advancements that fundamentally transform society.
- jasode 11y ago
  > Smartphones are this century's invention. If you notice, I had deliberately used the word "cellphone" instead of "smartphone". Cellphones (1980s) were 20th century technology. Many poor villagers don't have smartphones but they do have cellphones.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Right. My misread, I apologize. The reason I read 'smartphone' instead of 'cellphone' is that they're related to an observation I find important - that smartphones are actually essential tools for the poor. Internet access gives significant quality of life improvements.
    - cm2187 11y ago
      Cellphones only took off in the late 90s. They are not really 80s technology, at least for poor peasans.
    - Retric 11y ago
      You could use the internet on a web on a phone in late 90's. The post 2000 smartphone was more an evolution than a specific capability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_browser EX: BlackBerry 850 (1999) was very email centric.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        You could, but the Internet in mid-to-late 90's was nothing like it looks today. I still remember WAP browsers and this was not something useful for general population in a way smartphones and the Internet of today are. Western corporate businessmen did AFAIK had some use for it though.
  - blaincate 11y ago
    I was in india till 2001 and very few people in urban areas has cellular phone. Even in US during studies, very few students had cell phones (2001-2002). The advent of cellphone is definitely from 2000 (not before). atleast my experience. a found a link to support my observation: http://www.cartesian.com/the-rise-of-mobile-phones-20-years-of-global-adoption/ http://www.cartesian.com/the-rise-of-mobile-phones-20-years-...

qrendel 11y ago

It's incidental (for me) that this article should be posted today. Only two days ago, in a philosophy class on environmental ethics, I was told by the professor that my answer to a discussion prompt on "ecofeminism," which cited the development of the washing machine as facilitating the women's rights movement, would be disagreed with by feminists and that it reflected my worldview that it was women's "essential role in life to do laundry." The counterargument was that World War 2 had been responsible for women entering the workforce and not household electrical appliances. My rebuttal that this may not explain global demographic data from developing countries has thus far gone unanswered. Apologies for the personal anecdote, but needless to say I'm still a bit offended at having been called a bigot. Particularly when Ana Swanson, a "reporter for Wonkblog specializing in business, economics, data visualization and China" would probably not have been similarly told that by writing this article she believes housework is women's essential role in life. It seems some would require extensive quantitative evidence for this claim to avoid stepping on any toes, though, and I wonder if Hans Rosling, Ha-Joon Chang, Max Roser and the others making it have quantified to what extent appliances were an influence compared to other factors.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Personally I'm starting to believe in a limited form of something I heard called 'technological determinism' - that it's the technology that shapes society. Your washing machine would be an example. Another would be seeing civil rights movement as enabled by the printing press.
- MIKarlsen 11y ago
  That is not technological determinism. Technological determinism would suggest that this happens WITHOUT OUR SOCIAL WORLDS BEING ABLE TO INTERVENE. I don't subscribe to this. Read this by Sally Wyatt - https://prezi.com/x06bsuq4an_o/technological-determinism-is-dead-long-live-technological-determinism/ https://prezi.com/x06bsuq4an_o/technological-determinism-is-...
- gearhart 11y ago
  Have you read Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media? Written in the 60s, explaining world phenomena from the perspective of "media" (which he uses to mean something very similar to "technology" - roads and the printing press both qualify) and accurately predicts the effect of the internet on society. Dense, but very worth reading if you're interested in macro societal change.

TorKlingberg 11y ago

What is strange to me is how the invention of home appliances seems to have stopped. The refrigerator, washing machine, vacuum and dishwasher all made huge changes to everyday life. But since the microwave oven, there has been nothing major. We are still spending many hours on household work. Are the remaining chores just to difficult to automate?

pkorzeniewski 11y ago
It's funny that on the one hand we'll soon have something as advanced as self-driving cars, and on the other we still need to iron our clothes, wipe off the dust and take garbage manually :)
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  It's not because of technology. We just tend to solve problems in order of how easy is to create a business model out of them.
  - joshontheweb 11y ago
    Trust me, there is a HUGE business model to be made out of washing and ironing clothes. Many who can afford it have maids to do this. If it was possible to automate these tasks it would be hugely valuable for the provider and the recipient.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Of course. The problem isn't the size, but the difficulty level of designing a successful business model.
    - jdhawk 11y ago
      Then build a traditional pickup and delivery laundry service with enough scale to offer competitive prices to in-home laundry services. Now you can have revenue to fund your R&D departments "automation" goals, increasing your margins...

dbuxton 11y ago

I'd love to see a study of these tech adoption trends and their effect in an even shorter timescale like in post-Soviet countries. In Russia even a few years ago, all my friends' parents would obsessively pickle the hell out of whatever they could grow. My impression is now that that tradition has almost disappeared among the younger generations.

denis1 11y ago
I'm from an East European country and can confirm that the pickle obsession seems to be a lot less relevant for the newer generations. But I think the cause for this is better access to western style supermarket chains and not technological.
- scott_karana 11y ago
  Supermarkets are enabled both by refrigeration and by trucking. How is that not technological?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

amelius 11y ago

So many technological improvements, and we are still working 40+ hours per week...

kefka 11y ago
That's because we are being pushed back into the working conditions of a peasant. They worked because there wasn't enough time to do everything. And we're being worked because we cannot get enough money for the basics, like rent and food. Its another way of control.
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
We're working 40+ hours a week. That's at a job. But when we come home, we're working less at home. That's still progress.
- amelius 11y ago
  Well usually, one person was going to work, and the other person usually worked at home (doing laundry, etc.) Nowadays, two people have to work to pay the mortgage. Not really progress if you ask me.

osullivj 11y ago

Looking back it's amazing how little change there was through the twentieth century in fundamental consumer tech. Radio, TV, record players, fridges, washing machines & vacuum cleaners were all available in the 1930s. Sure, they became cheaper and more widely available, but IMHO, not much changed in home tech until the 1980s.

hueving 11y ago
They may have existed in some form but that doesn't mean they were good, widespread, or useful. It's like saying that since the first semiconductor was invented, nothing has really changed in computing tech.
- marincounty 11y ago
  With the exception of the '80 most of these items lasted longer, were easily repairable, or made to be repaired. As a child, when my parents bought an appliance it was a big deal, and that appliance lasted. It was partially due to practical engineering, an emphasis on longevity, and my father who refused to spend his hard earned money on a new washing machine every two years. My father believed in 15 years durable goods. And so due I. (Yes--that's a fragment Mr. Taylor.) So appliances, I don't want your bells and whistles. I want an appliance that lasts. I want a service manual attached to the gizmo, along with the warranty information. I want an assurance of a few years of the availability of repair parts. I don't need, nor want to buy a new appliance every two years, but I know you have built it into your business cycle by now. Some of us see through the scam, and just aren't buying. Everything I said here, goes for any new automobile(gas, alt fuel, electric), but that might be a loosing fight? I can't believe how people buy automobiles. They buy them like they will never break down?
  - rmc 11y ago
    Are you willing to pay significantly more for your home appliances?
    - 11y ago

t_fatus 11y ago

Whant happens if you try to plot the relative improvement instead of absolute reduction of working hours? Because it's much more difficult to kill the remaining ones than the ones gained by the washing machine!

scottmcdot 11y ago

Why is the 'Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate' for women going down again?

TorKlingberg 11y ago
It could be lower US employment in general since the 2008 downturn.

anjc 11y ago

Agh I wish people would either read some of Christensen's work, or even the basic Wikipedia article, or else stop using the word 'disruptive' in this context. It's diluting a concept which used to have a very specific meaning, and has rapidly changed to mean nothing, through misuse. This article starts off by almost calling people out, saying that people use 'disruptive' in the wrong way, but then it proceeds to make the same basic errors. There are a few key characteristics of a disruptive innovation. One is that incumbents don't notice the changes due to market myopia. Were competitors to the vacuum unaware of the technical leaps possible due to technology? I will bet not. Another key characteristic is that it causes competitor value-networks to change. What value network changed by vacuums being adopted? The hitting-rug-with-stick value network? How much value flows through this network? Did the sweeping brush value network change? No, everyone still has a sweeping brush even now. All that happened was that consumer demands changed and a new product was adopted. But wasn't it still an amazing leap in technology? Yes! It was a 'radical innovation'! "Disruptive" does not mean "big change". It doesn't mean "impressive". It doesn't mean "unexpected competition". In this case, it doesn't mean "society changed over the course of a century as a new industry was created due to ancillary technological improvements". It certainly doesn't mean "normal dynamics of industry and competition", which is how most people seem to inexplicably use it.

ulrikrasmussen 11y ago

Also relevant: This[1] Nautilus article about how we have a tendency to over-estimate the significance of new technology in the future, simply because it is new. [1] http://nautil.us/issue/28/2050/why-futurism-has-a-cultural-blindspot http://nautil.us/issue/28/2050/why-futurism-has-a-cultural-b...

hudibras 11y ago

There's a beautiful chapter ("The Sad Irons") in Robert Caro's first volume of his Lyndon Johnson biography which describes life in rural Texas in the 1930s before they got electricity. Because all the electric appliances existed already, their world was transformed literally overnight when the switch was flipped and the juice started flowing.

encoderer 11y ago

What am I missing? The graph suggests only 1/3 of Americans had a water heater as of 1985?

ghaff 11y ago
Note that you don't need a discrete water heater to have hot water. I didn't have one in my current house until I got a new furnace a few years back. Multi-unit buildings may also have shared hot water heaters which may factor into the numbers as well.

ll123 11y ago

I think the most disruptive technology invented recently is effective birth control.

rm999 11y ago
Effective birth control isn't recent - it was a reasonably flourishing industry and concept by the 1850s (including rubber and skin condoms). American birth rates plummeted from 1800 to the mid 1800s because of this. Modern innovations have certainly made birth control more convenient, but I think the biggest changes have been social.

adwn 11y ago

This reminds me of a film from 1960, "The Home Of The Future: Year 1999 A.D." [1], where even more household chores are automated (for example, meals are delivered and stored frozen, and take only seconds to heat up). However, for some reason, the wife still stays at home (and goes shopping) while the husband works and pays the bills. This made me think that the only development which is harder to predict than technological progress, is sociocultural progress. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4

pseudonom- 11y ago

This thesis seems rather incomplete in light of: https://www.nber.org/digest/oct08/w13985.html https://www.nber.org/digest/oct08/w13985.html http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1975-07262-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1975-07262-001

Rainymood 11y ago

You know what has been one of the sickest revolutions ever? Ballpoint pens. Just let that sink in.

vonnik 11y ago

AKA robots that replaced human labor.

anonbanker 11y ago
sssshh. we're not supposed to talk about that.

jhallenworld 11y ago

As an owner of an older home I find the evolution of central heating to be fascinating. I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-Art-Steam-Heating/dp/0974396095 http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-Art-Steam-Heating/dp/09743960...

jhallenworld 11y ago

Where is the vibrator, the fifth home electrical appliance, on these graphs? :-) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/27/hysteria-and-the-long-strange-history-of-the-vibrator-vertical.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/27/hysteria-an...