3 ms·
> you're only going to invent RSA or blind signatures or zero knowledge once. Well, maybe. Sometimes things that are discovered are lost or go completely unnot
by cmontella 4y ago
> you're only going to invent RSA or blind signatures or zero knowledge once.
Well, maybe. Sometimes things that are discovered are lost or go completely unnoticed, so progress is not always monotonic. For example, for a long time it was believed that John William Strutt first documented dynamic soaring [1] in birds in the 1800s, but just recently (2018) it was found that actually none other than Leonardo DaVinci documented the phenomena in his notebooks centuries before [2]. People just didn't notice or forgot, despite those documents being some of the most poured over in history.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_soaring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_soaring
[2] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2018.0024 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2018.002...
- mmsimanga 4y agoSometimes people just aren't ready for new knowledge or they don't know enough to understand it. I see this when new person enters an industry, healthcare in my case. It takes about a year to understand the nuances between healthcare providers, funders and administrators. I am guessing people read what Leonardo wrote but they just didn't understand the significance.
- virissimo 4y agoGood point. The same thing definitely happens in physics too. For example, people attributed important advances in mathematical physics (such as the mean speed theorem) to Galileo despite them having been already developed extensively in the middle ages.