4 ms·
I doubt it. If an alien species came to Earth and gave us a plastic that was 100 times as strong as standard plastic, we'd just go “wow, that's some strong plas
by c3534l 7y ago
I doubt it. If an alien species came to Earth and gave us a plastic that was 100 times as strong as standard plastic, we'd just go “wow, that's some strong plastic."
- praxulus 7y agoWell, we live in age where rapid technological progress is considered normal, or even mundane. I don't want to imply that there was no new technology developed in the middle ages, but I don't think your average medieval lord expected to see notable technological advancements from generation to generation, let alone year to year.
- Retric 7y agoI suspect that’s our biases talking. For a recent example, tend to think of vacuum tubes as a single thing, but they had vast investments in R&D and got much better over time. And that’s for something invented in 1904. Similarly, I suspect a huge range of technical innovation that occurred throughout medieval time gets compressed into a few simple ideas like swords or plows. However, if you’re actually using these things day in and say out, what seems to us as a minor change could have been thought of as revolutionary at the time.
- Gravityloss 7y agoAnd there's vacuun tube innovation today still! For guitar amplifiers.
- sigstoat 7y agoi don't know, there's a sibling comment demonstrating that titanium has managed to enter the popular consciousness as a near-magically strong metal, when there's still plenty of uses for steel, and aluminum (even ignoring cost). so, like vantablack, and titanium, i think the excitement around the wonder-plastic would depend on marketing.