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Kasparov complains that there aren't enough revolutionary technologies that push the world forward, as opposed to incremental improvements driven by wanting to

by gjm11 16y ago

Kasparov complains that there aren't enough revolutionary technologies that push the world forward, as opposed to incremental improvements driven by wanting to please consumers. And then he says the last genuine technological revolution was ... the Apple II? Huh? The Apple II was a fine product. But it was an incremental advance on its predecessors like the Commodore PET and, er, the Apple I (whose existence Kasparov might perhaps have been able to guess from the Apple II's name). And: Mobile phones (as already pointed out by simonsarris). GPS. Affordable laser printers. The internet. Functional magnetic resonance imaging. Compact discs. Digital cameras. Etc., etc., etc. There's no shortage of things at least as revolutionary as the Apple II since 1977. (Some of them are based on fundamental developments a few years earlier, but none of them as much so as the Apple II.)

kraemate 16y ago
The internet is older than the Apple II. Apart from GPS and FMRI, i dont agree that the other consumer-products are revolutionary at all. CDs are notoriously unreliable data storage mechanism which are already obselete; laser printers haven't done much other than enable people to waste more paper ; digital cameras are just dense CCDs, nothing great or new about that.
- gjm11 16y ago
  Are you serious? > The internet is older than the Apple II. Depends on what you mean by "the internet". The core protocols are older than the Apple II, but e.g. the linkup between ARPANET and NSFNet wasn't until the 1980s. > CDs are notoriously unreliable data storage mechanism which are already obsolete CDs were revolutionary because they were the first widely used digital music format. And they may be "notoriously unreliable", but my CDs are holding up better in terms of sound quality than a similarly-aged collection of LPs would without heroic measures. Sure, they're certainly obsolescent now, if not actually obsolete, but so is the Apple II. > laser printers haven't done much other than enable people to waste more paper Laser printers made it possible for anyone to produce near-publishable-quality documents. This is a Big Deal, even if for whatever reason you don't like it. > digital cameras are just dense CCDs, nothing great or new about that. And the Apple II was just a slightly better personal computer. Digital cameras have made traditional film cameras obsolete. They have completely changed the way in which people take pictures by drastically shortening the feedback loop from initial capture to inspection, and by making it essentially free to take large numbers of pictures. They have greatly increased the role of photography in most people's lives. (Still more as they have become commonly integrated into mobile phones.) Now, if you wish to define "revolutionary" very strictly, then of course you can say that none of these things is really revolutionary -- but then the Apple II will come out also not being revolutionary. Kasparov is wrong either way.

by gjm11 16y ago

kraemate 16y ago

The internet is older than the Apple II. Apart from GPS and FMRI, i dont agree that the other consumer-products are revolutionary at all. CDs are notoriously unreliable data storage mechanism which are already obselete; laser printers haven't done much other than enable people to waste more paper ; digital cameras are just dense CCDs, nothing great or new about that.

gjm11 16y ago
Are you serious? > The internet is older than the Apple II. Depends on what you mean by "the internet". The core protocols are older than the Apple II, but e.g. the linkup between ARPANET and NSFNet wasn't until the 1980s. > CDs are notoriously unreliable data storage mechanism which are already obsolete CDs were revolutionary because they were the first widely used digital music format. And they may be "notoriously unreliable", but my CDs are holding up better in terms of sound quality than a similarly-aged collection of LPs would without heroic measures. Sure, they're certainly obsolescent now, if not actually obsolete, but so is the Apple II. > laser printers haven't done much other than enable people to waste more paper Laser printers made it possible for anyone to produce near-publishable-quality documents. This is a Big Deal, even if for whatever reason you don't like it. > digital cameras are just dense CCDs, nothing great or new about that. And the Apple II was just a slightly better personal computer. Digital cameras have made traditional film cameras obsolete. They have completely changed the way in which people take pictures by drastically shortening the feedback loop from initial capture to inspection, and by making it essentially free to take large numbers of pictures. They have greatly increased the role of photography in most people's lives. (Still more as they have become commonly integrated into mobile phones.) Now, if you wish to define "revolutionary" very strictly, then of course you can say that none of these things is really revolutionary -- but then the Apple II will come out also not being revolutionary. Kasparov is wrong either way.