5 ms·

Ohhh yeah, we lost a lot of things: We lost all those noises that Teletype did that drove anyone crazy. Without the Linotype we lost all the toxic fumes that

Ohhh yeah, we lost a lot of things: We lost all those noises that Teletype did that drove anyone crazy. Without the Linotype we lost all the toxic fumes that killed people, and the accidents with molten lead being expelled and burning people. We lost the exclusivity factor of only a few companies being able to spend the enormous price those things had and the many people that were needed to repair the machines, write, physically send and receive messages.

digi_owl 9y ago
And in return we have gained landfills of perfectly functional devices that no longer can be sued because some "genius" decided to replace some framework or other only a few years after the devices were shipped...
jacobolus 9y ago
But we also have lost the ability for regular people to look at the machines they use every day and understand them purely by inspection, with no “black boxes”. That’s no small loss. While we can now use computer controlled machines to cut materials at higher precision and into trickier shapes than ever before, mechanical knowledge and skill is in the hands of a smaller proportion of the population. There has been a significant erosion in the broader society’s skill at physical/mechanical reasoning and invention. We have amazingly precise calculators and displays but the elimination of slide rules and nomograms and physical measuring devices and drafting tools and the steady reduction of geometry in school curricula mean that geometric intuition and insight into the numerical relationships involved are on the retreat. Instead of inventors, machinists, assembly workers, or repair technicians we are left with a society of salespeople and paper pushers, with the occasional computer programmer or statistician. Even folks working in architecture, industrial design, mechanical engineering, or similar careers today spend most of their time sitting and staring at a screen.
- PJDK 9y ago
  Does this assertion really hold up? While every day I use machines I can't easily inspect I also have access to a wealth of very easily accessible information about all manner of physical/mechanical things, plus the ability to order just about any tool material that can be dreamt of. On a personal level, I'm about to embark on a very ambitious DIY project that I doubt I would have the confidence to undertake if I didn't have access to thousands of youtube tutorials and an internet's worth of material suppliers.
  - Animats 9y ago
    Now that's true. In the 1990s, to build electronics, I had to establish a credit account with Hamilton/Avnet just to order parts. Making a PC board at least used CAD, but AutoCAD, not an electrical CAD program. The files went to one shop that generated Gerber films, which had to be sent to the board fab shop, with about two week turnaround.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    It’s easier than ever before for someone enthusiastic to learn just about anything... and fewer people than ever bother. At least that’s my impression. Perhaps related to modern children’s lack of free play https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-par... and everyone’s incredible amounts of phone time.
- thanatropism 9y ago
  I don't know that this isn't true of every leap of abstraction in the broader history of Mankind. Technology is a Faustian bargain.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    Sure. For example: First we had people who raised their own sheep or grew or scavenged their own plant fibers, spun their own thread, made their own cloth, sewed all their own clothing together by hand, etc., and spent a significant proportion of their lifetimes on clothing production. Next we moved to industrial production of cloth and mass adoption of sewing machines, so people could make their own clothing from purchased cloth, or hire someone local to sew the clothing. Next we moved to industrial production of clothing, but most people could still alter and repair clothing or hire someone local to alter or repair it. Now we are at the stage where clothing is so cheap that most people have no idea about any of the process, and buy masses of disposable clothing which they mostly never wear, donating it in bulk or throwing it out when they notice it’s been sitting in a closet for a decade. And the same is true for housing, agricultural products, food, transportation, furniture, containers, toys, books, artificial lighting, music, storytelling, financial record-keeping, electrical gadgets, ... But those final stages of transition to pure consumerism are I think the most alienating, involving not just lack of personal skill but lack of even the most basic concept of what goes into the products we use every day, or any understanding of the supply chains and production processes involved, or even a comprehension of how the products themselves work.
    - thanatropism 9y ago
      You'd enjoy Heideggerian philosophy. Heidegger himself is too dense and has alternate interpretations ("Tool-being" by Graham Harman has this whole emphasis on the tool-analysis that reminds me of the vibrations in Buddhist dharma), but Herbert Dreyfus' "Being in the world" emphasizes this side of "Being in time". After "Being in time" and his brief flirtation with Nazism, Heidegger actually made his project to write a metaphysical history of Being in stages much like those you described. That too is dense and somewhat requires an acute sensibility for German lyrical poetry... Anyway, "stockpiles of Being" is a good google keyword I venture...
- Animats 9y ago
  There has been a significant erosion in the broader society’s skill at physical/mechanical reasoning and invention. This used to be a problem with education in some countries other than the US. Now the US has it, too. Back in the 1980s, I was talking to a mechanical engineering professor at Stanford, and he was grumbling that many Indian students at Stanford had never used a screwdriver, and thought it was beneath them to use tools. That was something for the lower classes. Now the US has that mindset. Too many Americans have never even been inside a factory, let alone worked in one. They have no idea how stuff is made. No sense of the basic manufacturing processes. No sense of how a factory works. This is a problem, and part of the decline in US manufacturing. The last Tesla discussion showed this. Many of the people commenting didn't realize that the problems Tesla is having are normal factory startup problems. Tesla management thought they could take short-cuts and escape those problems as they scaled up for the Model 3. That didn't work out as well as expected. We went through this with the 3D printing mania a few years back. There were people claiming you'd get a custom-made fender 3D printed at a body shop in a few hours, and this would be cheaper. No. There are some very cheap, very effective standard processes for making things in quantity, and if you can design to use those processes, you'll get a lot of parts cheaply. Here's a video of one process, progressive stamping. [1] Complex metal parts are made from sheet metal this way. The dies are complex and expensive, but once it's working, each shift bangs out about 25,000 parts with minimal human attention. After watching this video, look at some bent metal parts around you and try to imagine the bending and punching steps that made them. Only a tiny fraction of the US population today even knows progressive stamping exists. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8d3YCtr5pA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8d3YCtr5pA
cafard 9y ago
I knew a proofreader who had been a Linotypist until one day he bent over to pick up the next magazine and could not straighten up. They led him off to the infirmary, still bent at 90 degrees, and when he came back from medical leave they decided that lifting magazines should no longer be part of his job.

digi_owl 9y ago

And in return we have gained landfills of perfectly functional devices that no longer can be sued because some "genius" decided to replace some framework or other only a few years after the devices were shipped...

jacobolus 9y ago

But we also have lost the ability for regular people to look at the machines they use every day and understand them purely by inspection, with no “black boxes”. That’s no small loss. While we can now use computer controlled machines to cut materials at higher precision and into trickier shapes than ever before, mechanical knowledge and skill is in the hands of a smaller proportion of the population. There has been a significant erosion in the broader society’s skill at physical/mechanical reasoning and invention. We have amazingly precise calculators and displays but the elimination of slide rules and nomograms and physical measuring devices and drafting tools and the steady reduction of geometry in school curricula mean that geometric intuition and insight into the numerical relationships involved are on the retreat. Instead of inventors, machinists, assembly workers, or repair technicians we are left with a society of salespeople and paper pushers, with the occasional computer programmer or statistician. Even folks working in architecture, industrial design, mechanical engineering, or similar careers today spend most of their time sitting and staring at a screen.

PJDK 9y ago
Does this assertion really hold up? While every day I use machines I can't easily inspect I also have access to a wealth of very easily accessible information about all manner of physical/mechanical things, plus the ability to order just about any tool material that can be dreamt of. On a personal level, I'm about to embark on a very ambitious DIY project that I doubt I would have the confidence to undertake if I didn't have access to thousands of youtube tutorials and an internet's worth of material suppliers.
- Animats 9y ago
  Now that's true. In the 1990s, to build electronics, I had to establish a credit account with Hamilton/Avnet just to order parts. Making a PC board at least used CAD, but AutoCAD, not an electrical CAD program. The files went to one shop that generated Gerber films, which had to be sent to the board fab shop, with about two week turnaround.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  It’s easier than ever before for someone enthusiastic to learn just about anything... and fewer people than ever bother. At least that’s my impression. Perhaps related to modern children’s lack of free play https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-par... and everyone’s incredible amounts of phone time.
thanatropism 9y ago
I don't know that this isn't true of every leap of abstraction in the broader history of Mankind. Technology is a Faustian bargain.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  Sure. For example: First we had people who raised their own sheep or grew or scavenged their own plant fibers, spun their own thread, made their own cloth, sewed all their own clothing together by hand, etc., and spent a significant proportion of their lifetimes on clothing production. Next we moved to industrial production of cloth and mass adoption of sewing machines, so people could make their own clothing from purchased cloth, or hire someone local to sew the clothing. Next we moved to industrial production of clothing, but most people could still alter and repair clothing or hire someone local to alter or repair it. Now we are at the stage where clothing is so cheap that most people have no idea about any of the process, and buy masses of disposable clothing which they mostly never wear, donating it in bulk or throwing it out when they notice it’s been sitting in a closet for a decade. And the same is true for housing, agricultural products, food, transportation, furniture, containers, toys, books, artificial lighting, music, storytelling, financial record-keeping, electrical gadgets, ... But those final stages of transition to pure consumerism are I think the most alienating, involving not just lack of personal skill but lack of even the most basic concept of what goes into the products we use every day, or any understanding of the supply chains and production processes involved, or even a comprehension of how the products themselves work.
  - thanatropism 9y ago
    You'd enjoy Heideggerian philosophy. Heidegger himself is too dense and has alternate interpretations ("Tool-being" by Graham Harman has this whole emphasis on the tool-analysis that reminds me of the vibrations in Buddhist dharma), but Herbert Dreyfus' "Being in the world" emphasizes this side of "Being in time". After "Being in time" and his brief flirtation with Nazism, Heidegger actually made his project to write a metaphysical history of Being in stages much like those you described. That too is dense and somewhat requires an acute sensibility for German lyrical poetry... Anyway, "stockpiles of Being" is a good google keyword I venture...
Animats 9y ago
There has been a significant erosion in the broader society’s skill at physical/mechanical reasoning and invention. This used to be a problem with education in some countries other than the US. Now the US has it, too. Back in the 1980s, I was talking to a mechanical engineering professor at Stanford, and he was grumbling that many Indian students at Stanford had never used a screwdriver, and thought it was beneath them to use tools. That was something for the lower classes. Now the US has that mindset. Too many Americans have never even been inside a factory, let alone worked in one. They have no idea how stuff is made. No sense of the basic manufacturing processes. No sense of how a factory works. This is a problem, and part of the decline in US manufacturing. The last Tesla discussion showed this. Many of the people commenting didn't realize that the problems Tesla is having are normal factory startup problems. Tesla management thought they could take short-cuts and escape those problems as they scaled up for the Model 3. That didn't work out as well as expected. We went through this with the 3D printing mania a few years back. There were people claiming you'd get a custom-made fender 3D printed at a body shop in a few hours, and this would be cheaper. No. There are some very cheap, very effective standard processes for making things in quantity, and if you can design to use those processes, you'll get a lot of parts cheaply. Here's a video of one process, progressive stamping. [1] Complex metal parts are made from sheet metal this way. The dies are complex and expensive, but once it's working, each shift bangs out about 25,000 parts with minimal human attention. After watching this video, look at some bent metal parts around you and try to imagine the bending and punching steps that made them. Only a tiny fraction of the US population today even knows progressive stamping exists. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8d3YCtr5pA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8d3YCtr5pA

cafard 9y ago

I knew a proofreader who had been a Linotypist until one day he bent over to pick up the next magazine and could not straighten up. They led him off to the infirmary, still bent at 90 degrees, and when he came back from medical leave they decided that lifting magazines should no longer be part of his job.