3 ms·
History of Empire, History of Travel Technology, and History of Communications Technology are huuuuge fields with tons of professionals working today. I'm a lit
by UncleMeat 4y ago
History of Empire, History of Travel Technology, and History of Communications Technology are huuuuge fields with tons of professionals working today. I'm a little concerned about huge claims being made about empire by a Stanford MBA and a community of people mostly experienced in software and tech.
The historians would love for you to read their books! AHA is literally happening right now! Go to bars in Philly and talk to them!
- Karrot_Kream 4y agoYou don't even need to talk to someone. Pick up any book on European colonialism, the Roman Empire, Japanese imperialism, Chinese Imperial dynasties, medieval South Asia, pre-Islamic Persian empires, etc etc. Reddit's r/askhistorians is a great reference for sources on the more popular topics.
- wolverine876 4y agoI always look first for the reason I should trust them (how frustrating to look after reading a long article!). Don't forget they are also a highly trained engineer in SV, and made products used by lots of people today. Why not collaborate with a historian? > Go to bars in Philly and talk to them! ? What happens in bars in Philly? Nobody does it elsewhere?
- UncleMeat 4y agoThe American Historical Association Annual Conference (colloquially, AHA) is happening in Philly this weekend. Academics like to go out to drink after a day of talks. Mostly tongue-in-cheek. I don't actually think the best way to meet historians is to go to random bars in the cities hosting major conferences.
- dcow 4y agohttps://www.historians.org/annual-meeting https://www.historians.org/annual-meeting
- renewiltord 4y agoYeah, but software engineers are better at many things than professionals in their fields. The classic example is Jeff Bezos and gang stopping their companies from flying people to/from China a month before US authorities reacted to COVID-19. They also cancelled conferences two weeks before shelter-in-place and asked people to work from home. Tech professionals said that masks would help in the early stages while the US Surgeon General said "Masks don't work!" and Dr. Fauci said that you shouldn't be wearing any. This is the magic of tech: the people there are there for comparative advantage. They would be better than epidemiologists at epidemiology and better than public health experts at public health. But they're much better at tech than epidemiologists and public health experts are at tech, and so they go to tech. In a similar vein, I would be unsurprised to find that new insights about history come from technologists. Of course, I don't think this is one.
- UncleMeat 4y agoI.... Software Engineers are not better at making accurate historical claims than historians. I'd be fucking baffled if "new insights about history come from technologists" in any meaningful quantity. Like, it'd be among the most surprising thing involving human behavior I could imagine. Like, what software engineers do you know that have spent even a minute working in an archive? I see no way that this comment could be made without just a complete ignorance of the profession of history.
- nostrademons 4y agoI was assuming satire, but it really is hard to tell on the Internet...
- kcartlidge 4y agoI couldn't decide whether/how to vote as I couldn't work out if it was sarcasm. It seems like it must be, but it's written so earnestly.