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It's interesting that this bridge is still around. It seems like most of that society's energy was concentrated on building this bridge, and physical infrastru
by chubot 6y ago
It's interesting that this bridge is still around. It seems like most of that society's energy was concentrated on building this bridge, and physical infrastructure of that nature. Its best minds and hands were at work.
Similarly, in San Francisco, many people live in 100 year old houses. It's not like we discovered better "must have" ways of building houses that made the old ones obsolete.
I honestly think things like the Linux kernel (going on 25 years) and LLVM (going on nearly 20 years) will still be around in 100 or 500 years, and basically nobody will have the time or a reason to rebuild them. Kind of like the PC BIOS is still around.
People won't really be working much in those areas, but rather on top. Just like we kind of build "on top" of houses now. It's infrastructure that we can use to make progress in other areas. It reminds me of "How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand.
- messe 6y ago> Kind of like the PC BIOS is still around. Not any more. The BIOS has been replaced with UEFI on most new machines for about a decade now.
- chubot 6y agoYeah that is the thing that runs an entire OS right :) Like Minix or Linux. Still I bet the BIOS will still be around in many places. What about QEMU? Does it present a machine that contains a BIOS? A google search turns this up: http://funwithbits.net/blog/dissecting-the-rom-bios-shipped-with-qemu-for-fun/ http://funwithbits.net/blog/dissecting-the-rom-bios-shipped-... Which means that OSes still have BIOS support. It's not my area of expertise, but it seems like turtles all the way down. BIOS may not have been the best example, but Linux itself or Minix may be a good one. If 100 years from now there's a new dominant OS, there's probably going to still be UEFI with some legacy operating system booting it up ... Or something emulating UEFI, etc.
- jeffbee 6y agoA weird example since a 1920s San Francisco house was really a local nadir of domestic architecture, slapdash work that was adequate in a time of abundant wool and heating fuels. Most 1920s SF houses aren't worth what it would cost to dismantle them, or at least they wouldn't be if there wasn't a land use and planning crisis in that city. A modern house would have a tiny fraction of the energy demanded by 1920s SF tract housing, and 100% less interior mold.