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I think we over-emphasize elements that seem more “technological,” overestimate their importance. The printing press example is great. We credit the press becau
by dalbasal 9y ago
I think we over-emphasize elements that seem more “technological,” overestimate their importance. The printing press example is great. We credit the press because it’s mechanical and complex, but not the paper (or ink or literacy or religion).
For peaches in winter, most people think of botany, refrigeration, airplanes… science. Fewer people would think of joint stock companies or shipping containers as important enablers.
For productivity, it seems impossible that a computer on every desk with modern digital communication, software of every kind and all our gadgets didn’t move the productivity needle. It’s all so technological. In practice, non-technologies like kanban or just-in-time did move the productivity needle. It’s counterintuitive.
There are a lot of examples of counterintuitive bland results. Genetic engineering has not improved crop yields nearly as much as green revolution technology, not even close. Nuclear energy changed very little besides war.
That’s not to say these aren’t impactful technologies. Computers have changed our lives and our work. Modern Agg-tech has changed farming. It just didn’t change total output all that much.
I suppose that in the theme of this article, big technologies work in complexes, and that makes them hard to bang into a narrative and hard to predict.
- KGIII 9y agoFrom the Industrial Revolution, we got interchangeable parts and standardization. I think those really had some of the largest impacts on society.
- dalbasal 9y agoAbsolutely. It’s a good example of weird/unintuitive causation. Standardisation is a byproduct of industrialisation & mass production.
- kazen44 9y agoprobably the most important invention of the industrial revolution is the screw-cutting lathe by Henry Maudslay[1] Without the screw cutting lathe, precision parts where impossible to make. Without machine tools, creating basically any other machine that we use today would be impossible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudslay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudslay
- gozur88 9y agoI would have said steam power.
- larsiusprime 9y agoIndeed! We also tend to discount the unintended consequences. For instance, the printing press was probably a major catalyst in sparking witch hunts, which perhaps has some lessons for modern day social media: https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept09/2009/10/31/unintended-consequences/ https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept09/2009/10/31/unintended-con...
- dalbasal 9y agoYep. Though specifically to printing, I was taught in school about the printing press leading to the protestant reformation and it's consequences. Witch hunts might be considered a part of that. The same thing might be happening right now. It's widely accepted that online media revolutionized the political landscape. In Europe and the states we saw centrist parties lose control of the agenda, and the empowerment of fringier politics. Trump, LePenn, alt-right, Brexit, etc. In the middle east we saw a bigger earlier impact: the arab spring protests are widely credited to online media. This is much more controversial, but I think the ISIS family of religious phenomenon (and many less headline grabbing ones) has a Luther-Gutenberg relationship with online media.
- huxley 9y agoI found that the 1978 BBC documentary series "Connections" by James Burke really spoke to that as well as the interrelatedness of inventions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)