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Has our civilisation forgotten how to build things any more? No, we frequently build things. Imagine if in the 20th century we stopped at "Automobiles are doo
by matthewmacleod 4y ago
Has our civilisation forgotten how to build things any more?
No, we frequently build things.
Imagine if in the 20th century we stopped at "Automobiles are doomed. Who's going to build all these highways and gas stations!?" or "The lightbulb is a nice idea, but we have no power plants, an they're super expensive!"
This happened literally all the time.
- iggldiggl 4y ago> This happened literally all the time. 1. That ↑, but also… 2. … the spread of lightbulbs or automobiles happened organically, simply because people perceived them as better than what was there beforehand and wanted them. There was no big centralised push like "We must switch from horse carts to 100 % automobiles within two years in order to avoid the big horse dung apocalypse", so the spread of those new technologies simply happened at whatever speed was feasible and sensible. If it turned out that building the required new infrastructure for lightbulbs or automobiles was a little harder than initially estimated, the buildout simply happened a little slower and that's that. Whereas now there are external goals attached to the process (must have X % electric cars by 20xx in order to avoid the apocalypse), so if it turns out that reaching that goal is harder then expected, there's immediately much hand-wringing.