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> "I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is

> "I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things." There's truth to this quote, but a lot missing. It sort of implies a world view where new technologies, like fashions, continuously spring up at a somewhat regular pace, so that each generation has its own technological reference point distinct from their children or parents. Think about it, that's probably approximately how you view the world, don't you? It's how it's been for generations. But actually, it's only been that way for a handful of generations. For about 300 years or so. Prior to the industrial revolution, the pace of technological innovation was so slow most people would not notice it within their lifetime. They could safely accept their parents advice on how to navigate the world, confident it would still apply in their time as it had in theirs. They could safely pass their own wisdom on to their children, secure in the same certainty. Probably people saw time as more cyclical, thinking of how winter leads to summer and back to winter, and how the parent begets the child who then themselves becomes a parent. All that has been changed completely, utterly, and dramatically. We are now cut off from our prior generations because we have to recreate, in each generation, from scratch, the knowhow on how to cope with the environment we are born in. Many technological innovations have been very beneficial for many, but there is a cost to a fast pace of change.

msmenardi 4y ago
We couldn't have done it any other way. If we had slowly developed new technology we'd have run out of coal during the industrial revolution. We needed a slow build up on the shoulders of pre-industrial giants, and then a massive ignition of all our resources to reach as high as we could, hopefully finding a ledge of some kind where we can create a sustainable perch. Then, maybe we'll start again and slowly build up to a massive boom. But that's just speculation.
jjk166 4y ago
> But actually, it's only been that way for a handful of generations. For about 300 years or so. Prior to the industrial revolution, the pace of technological innovation was so slow most people would not notice it within their lifetime. It looks that way to us, but that is merely because we are too removed from that world to fully recognize how much things changed. As someone with no personal experience farming, the switch from say ox drawn to horse drawn plows, or from two field to three field systems might seem to be no big deal, but for an agricultural society they were very much revolutions. The printing press with movable type would utterly upend european society in the early modern period. But these are just the big events comparable to say the invention of the solid state transistor - lost to time were all the much more mundane tweaks to technologies that nevertheless would have had great effect on peoples day to day lives. Of course innovations did not spread as quickly due to slower means of communication and the lack of mass production meant it took some time for new items to replace old ones, and a generally lower standard of living made life simpler overall, but accounts from the past clearly show that people of the time still viewed the change as significant and there was substantial intergenerational angst.
- lucas_membrane 4y ago
  > 300 years The people who lived through it later recounted that the arrival of railroads (1830-1850) brought the strongest and fastest changes in lifestyle and culture. The telegraph came along about the same time, so maybe that was just the shock wave of the tech onslaught. The ultimate dominance of tech should have been obvious when Abraham Lincoln started spending lots of time at the telegraph office to manage the war. But it has taken a long time to rout the resistance -- although I am now a dinosaur for not carrying a phone, in 1940, the top officers of the French military did not have phones on their desks. Nowadays, being within sight of one's phone produces enough distraction to amount to a small cognitive impairment. Nonetheless, the machines will win. Read Vonnegut's _Player_Piano_.
- galdosdi 4y ago
  > As someone with no personal experience farming, the switch from say ox drawn to horse drawn plows, or from two field to three field systems might seem to be no big deal, but for an agricultural society they were very much revolutions. I am not saying huge changes did not happen occasionally. Just that they happened less frequently, and when they did happen, often happened at a slower pace. Not sure what I can say to make myself clearer.

msmenardi 4y ago

We couldn't have done it any other way. If we had slowly developed new technology we'd have run out of coal during the industrial revolution. We needed a slow build up on the shoulders of pre-industrial giants, and then a massive ignition of all our resources to reach as high as we could, hopefully finding a ledge of some kind where we can create a sustainable perch. Then, maybe we'll start again and slowly build up to a massive boom. But that's just speculation.

jjk166 4y ago

> But actually, it's only been that way for a handful of generations. For about 300 years or so. Prior to the industrial revolution, the pace of technological innovation was so slow most people would not notice it within their lifetime. It looks that way to us, but that is merely because we are too removed from that world to fully recognize how much things changed. As someone with no personal experience farming, the switch from say ox drawn to horse drawn plows, or from two field to three field systems might seem to be no big deal, but for an agricultural society they were very much revolutions. The printing press with movable type would utterly upend european society in the early modern period. But these are just the big events comparable to say the invention of the solid state transistor - lost to time were all the much more mundane tweaks to technologies that nevertheless would have had great effect on peoples day to day lives. Of course innovations did not spread as quickly due to slower means of communication and the lack of mass production meant it took some time for new items to replace old ones, and a generally lower standard of living made life simpler overall, but accounts from the past clearly show that people of the time still viewed the change as significant and there was substantial intergenerational angst.

lucas_membrane 4y ago
> 300 years The people who lived through it later recounted that the arrival of railroads (1830-1850) brought the strongest and fastest changes in lifestyle and culture. The telegraph came along about the same time, so maybe that was just the shock wave of the tech onslaught. The ultimate dominance of tech should have been obvious when Abraham Lincoln started spending lots of time at the telegraph office to manage the war. But it has taken a long time to rout the resistance -- although I am now a dinosaur for not carrying a phone, in 1940, the top officers of the French military did not have phones on their desks. Nowadays, being within sight of one's phone produces enough distraction to amount to a small cognitive impairment. Nonetheless, the machines will win. Read Vonnegut's _Player_Piano_.
galdosdi 4y ago
> As someone with no personal experience farming, the switch from say ox drawn to horse drawn plows, or from two field to three field systems might seem to be no big deal, but for an agricultural society they were very much revolutions. I am not saying huge changes did not happen occasionally. Just that they happened less frequently, and when they did happen, often happened at a slower pace. Not sure what I can say to make myself clearer.