3 ms·

" A sight of the world today would surprise President Jefferson much more, I suspect, than the world of 2022 would surprise the little girl who sells candies at

" A sight of the world today would surprise President Jefferson much more, I suspect, than the world of 2022 would surprise the little girl who sells candies at Grand Central Station. For Jefferson knew nothing of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, automobiles, aeroplanes, gramophones, movies, radium, &c.; he did not even know hot and cold bathrooms." I wonder what we would show the girl of 1922? Space travel and obviously the internet & computers come to mind. Antibiotics, DNA? Anything else?

sixQuarks 5y ago
Worldstarhiphop.com
bspammer 5y ago
I'd think somewhere like Times Square, the strip in Vegas, or Shinjuku in Tokyo at night would be mindblowing. Then probably show her VR, and a modern action movie in 3D. VR still blows the minds of everyone I show it to. I can't imagine what kind of reaction someone from 1922 would give.
adrian_b 5y ago
Internet and computers are the most different from what existed before 1922, but already then everybody was familiar with telegraphy, telephony and wireless communications and various fiction works about intelligent robots had existed for millennia (starting with the Iliad). Space travel was also present in many fiction works, the best known being several novels of Jules Verne and of H. G. Wells. Antibiotics were a huge progress, but the concept would not have been a surprise for anyone, because searching for substances that one would ingest to kill the parasites causing various diseases was already a well understood method in medicine, e.g. like using quinine against the protozoan that causes malaria or organo-arsenic compounds against the bacteria that cause syphilis. Even if already in antiquity some have supposed that many diseases are caused by very small invisible parasites, only during the 19th century the causes for most common infectious diseases have been identified. So also in this domain the differences between 1922 and 1822 are much larger than between 1922 and 2022. By 1922, genetics was much better understood than in 1822 even if it was not known yet that it is based on information encoded in the molecules of nucleic acids. I cannot find any domain of science and technology where the difference between 1922 and 1822 is not much larger than between 2022 and 1922. On the other hand, in 1922 there was still a very large part of the human population whose life had not been affected yet by the progresses of the 19th century, e.g. who had never used a telephone, an automobile or a train, much less an airplane or a computing machine or a washing machine. The main difference between 1922 and 2022 is that all the technologies that in 1922 existed only in extremely expensive devices or in experimental devices now exist in cheap devices that are used by most people and such devices have sizes and energy consumptions that are many orders of magnitude less than what could have been done with the technologies from 100 years ago. The main progress during the last 100 years has been in practical engineering, with much less progress in basic science.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  I genuinely can't wrap my head around your perspective on genetics. Literally everything we know about genetics was learned after 1922. What we knew in 1920 might get you through the first half of a one or two week high school lesson on genetics. > The main progress during the last 100 years has been in practical engineering, with much less progress in basic science. I actually think the situation is entirely reversed. The progress from 1822 to 1922 was largely engineering. The industrial revolution cause a violent and visceral change in the way that people experienced everyday life. Take genetics. In 1922 we didn't know that DNA existed. Or, we kind of has a vague sense. Since then, we: discovered the structure of DNA, sequenced the first human genome, and now for less than a month's wages & a vial of spit you can get a whole genome fastq. And that's just genetic sequencing. We have also learned a mind-boggling amount about how DNA interacts with other biological processes. And that's just genetics. Proteins. Neuroscience. The vascular system. The list goes on and on. Just in life sciences. And the (bio)engineering implications of that vast amount of scientific discovery are immense. More impactful but not as visceral as a railroad or an airplane. Scientifically, the progress from 1922 to 2022 is incredible compared to the progress from 1822 to 1922, but the engineering progress of 1822 to 1922 was much more visceral. Not even more significant in terms of lived experience. Just more visceral.
mikestew 5y ago
I wonder what we would show the girl of 1922 She can sell those candles on Etsy instead of standing around a train station all day. She will not, however, understand the enormous amount of change that took place in order to make that possible. It will give her a practical understanding of what those changes brought about, though.
whoopdedo 5y ago
The problem is Thomas Jefferson lived most of his life more than a hundred years prior to when this was written. Although still alive in 1822, he would have already seen much of the progress that would be foreign to his younger self. Such as the first steam engines. The author compares the perspective of a young girl looking 100 years into the future with that of an old man.
throwawaygh 5y ago
> I wonder what we would show the [candy selling] girl of 1922? 1. One of the banks of vending machines found in the train station where she used to work. 2. A high school classroom, as the alternative to her life of child labor. You might also show her Spotify, Netflix, and take her on a two week flight around the world. But I feel that a machine which does her old job and a bookish life for working class youth would be the most likely to blow her mind.

sixQuarks 5y ago

Worldstarhiphop.com

bspammer 5y ago

I'd think somewhere like Times Square, the strip in Vegas, or Shinjuku in Tokyo at night would be mindblowing. Then probably show her VR, and a modern action movie in 3D. VR still blows the minds of everyone I show it to. I can't imagine what kind of reaction someone from 1922 would give.

adrian_b 5y ago

Internet and computers are the most different from what existed before 1922, but already then everybody was familiar with telegraphy, telephony and wireless communications and various fiction works about intelligent robots had existed for millennia (starting with the Iliad). Space travel was also present in many fiction works, the best known being several novels of Jules Verne and of H. G. Wells. Antibiotics were a huge progress, but the concept would not have been a surprise for anyone, because searching for substances that one would ingest to kill the parasites causing various diseases was already a well understood method in medicine, e.g. like using quinine against the protozoan that causes malaria or organo-arsenic compounds against the bacteria that cause syphilis. Even if already in antiquity some have supposed that many diseases are caused by very small invisible parasites, only during the 19th century the causes for most common infectious diseases have been identified. So also in this domain the differences between 1922 and 1822 are much larger than between 1922 and 2022. By 1922, genetics was much better understood than in 1822 even if it was not known yet that it is based on information encoded in the molecules of nucleic acids. I cannot find any domain of science and technology where the difference between 1922 and 1822 is not much larger than between 2022 and 1922. On the other hand, in 1922 there was still a very large part of the human population whose life had not been affected yet by the progresses of the 19th century, e.g. who had never used a telephone, an automobile or a train, much less an airplane or a computing machine or a washing machine. The main difference between 1922 and 2022 is that all the technologies that in 1922 existed only in extremely expensive devices or in experimental devices now exist in cheap devices that are used by most people and such devices have sizes and energy consumptions that are many orders of magnitude less than what could have been done with the technologies from 100 years ago. The main progress during the last 100 years has been in practical engineering, with much less progress in basic science.

throwawaygh 5y ago
I genuinely can't wrap my head around your perspective on genetics. Literally everything we know about genetics was learned after 1922. What we knew in 1920 might get you through the first half of a one or two week high school lesson on genetics. > The main progress during the last 100 years has been in practical engineering, with much less progress in basic science. I actually think the situation is entirely reversed. The progress from 1822 to 1922 was largely engineering. The industrial revolution cause a violent and visceral change in the way that people experienced everyday life. Take genetics. In 1922 we didn't know that DNA existed. Or, we kind of has a vague sense. Since then, we: discovered the structure of DNA, sequenced the first human genome, and now for less than a month's wages & a vial of spit you can get a whole genome fastq. And that's just genetic sequencing. We have also learned a mind-boggling amount about how DNA interacts with other biological processes. And that's just genetics. Proteins. Neuroscience. The vascular system. The list goes on and on. Just in life sciences. And the (bio)engineering implications of that vast amount of scientific discovery are immense. More impactful but not as visceral as a railroad or an airplane. Scientifically, the progress from 1922 to 2022 is incredible compared to the progress from 1822 to 1922, but the engineering progress of 1822 to 1922 was much more visceral. Not even more significant in terms of lived experience. Just more visceral.

mikestew 5y ago

I wonder what we would show the girl of 1922 She can sell those candles on Etsy instead of standing around a train station all day. She will not, however, understand the enormous amount of change that took place in order to make that possible. It will give her a practical understanding of what those changes brought about, though.

whoopdedo 5y ago

The problem is Thomas Jefferson lived most of his life more than a hundred years prior to when this was written. Although still alive in 1822, he would have already seen much of the progress that would be foreign to his younger self. Such as the first steam engines. The author compares the perspective of a young girl looking 100 years into the future with that of an old man.

throwawaygh 5y ago

> I wonder what we would show the [candy selling] girl of 1922? 1. One of the banks of vending machines found in the train station where she used to work. 2. A high school classroom, as the alternative to her life of child labor. You might also show her Spotify, Netflix, and take her on a two week flight around the world. But I feel that a machine which does her old job and a bookish life for working class youth would be the most likely to blow her mind.