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> 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 i
by 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.
- jjk166 4y agoNo, you made yourself quite clear. What I am saying is that it wasn't actually substantially less frequent. There were lots of frequent changes but the further we move away from them, the more they blend together. Both our lives grow more different, meaning it is more difficult to understand what these changes meant, and the records of these changes become more scarce. Basically if you showed a medieval peasant a palm pilot and an iphone, they'ed see that they are different things but they wouldn't really understand just how much changed between them both in terms of how difficult the technology was to develop and how influential those changes were on our lives. Likewise we struggle to comprehend the intergenerational variation in their lives. But since around the year 800 you have a pretty consistent rate of 3-5 major revolutionary breakthroughs of the same caliber as the steam engine per century.