5 ms·

For last couple of centuries or so, each generation grows up with unprecedented change in their lifetime. I'd argue that this generation's changes aren't jus

by saulrh 15y ago

For last couple of centuries or so, each generation grows up with unprecedented change in their lifetime. I'd argue that this generation's changes aren't just unprecedented, but in an entirely different category. Not just in size, but in speed and extent. The cell phone alone is the most fundamental change in society in human history; suddenly, every person on earth can communicate instantly with almost any other person, and can broadcast an image to almost the entire planet in a matter of hours. And we couldn't do that twenty years ago. We couldn't even do that five years ago.

timthorn 15y ago
> The cell phone alone is the most fundamental change in society in human history What about the railways?
- iliis 15y ago
  Oh, trains are pretty fundamental and changed a lot. But a device so small it fits into your pocket, let's you communicate in real time with almost everybody, takes pictures and even movies (and sends them around the world), precisely calculates not only time but your location on the whole earth, can recognize speech, songs, books and other stuff, is able to translate fast between common languages, oh, and it let's you access the whole knowledge of our entire species wherever and whenever you want... I mean, I love railways, I really do, but compared to a thing like our cell phones? It would even be possible (altough quite cumbersome), to entirely live just from this thing! (Do some programming/webdesign/consulting/whatever to make money, order food and everything else online and you don't have to do anything else.)
  - timthorn 15y ago
    Clearly mobiles enable much faster communication - but in terms of societal change I believe the railways were much more important. Not only did it enable news/mail to travel much more quickly, but for the first time large numbers of people could easily visit areas beyond their immediate neigbourhood, and goods could be transported large distances within a day. It revolutionised farming and enabled the growth of cities.
  - scott_s 15y ago
    Railways were more of a fundamental change than where smart phones are now. (Note I'm allowing them to be a more fundamental change in the future.) Not because of individuals taking the train, but because it allowed goods to be mass transported easier - it built fundamental infrastructure. Smart phones aren't part of fundamental infrastructure (yet!).
- noonespecial 15y ago
  Railways and phones are part of the same change. The ubiquitous, ever-present global network. They just had a bit less penetration and a ton more lag.
DanBC 15y ago
What about soap? (And other cleanliness inventions) Or the transistor?
schrijver 15y ago
or birth control edt: i meant this to appear underneath the comments with other pretty meaningful inventions that caused huge social change
nitrogen 15y ago
I'd argue that this generation is seeing a larger change than any before. So long as we continue on our trend of exponential technological growth, this will be tautologically true.
- MPSimmons 15y ago
  Despite what Ray Kurzweil thinks, I don't believe that the rate of growth is maintainable until strong AI is developed, and when that happens, we'll be irrelevant. Prior to strong AI, I think we'll level out a bit. That's presuming strong AI is possible, of course, which I think it is.
- MPSimmons 15y ago
  Despite what Ray Kurzweil thinks, I don't believe that the rate of growth is maintainable until strong AI is developed, and when that happens, we'll be irrelevant. Prior to strong AI, I think we'll level out a bit. That's presuming strong AI is possible, of course, which I think it is.
zem 15y ago
"human history" covers a lot of territory. in terms of fundamental changes, nothing comes close to agriculture (let population densities skyrocket, enabled pyramid-style social setups) and writing (let knowledge accumulate rapidly from generation to generation).
- patrickk 15y ago
  Not to mention the wheel (that ubiquitous cliche), the discovery of bronze (an alloy of copper and tin that allowed for more durable weaponry), the Haber-Bosch process; and so on.
  - desas 15y ago
    Unlike computing none of those things reached near-ubiquity within one generation though.
dspillett 15y ago
* > I'd argue that this generation is seeing a larger change than any before.* I don't think the cell phone is that significant on its own, though it is up there with the changes others have mentioned. What this generation is seeing isn't one massive change: it is seeing a greater concentration of significant changes than previous generations, and some of those changes when grouped together have greater impact than they would individually.
dalke 15y ago
Consider someone who died in 1955 at the age of 70. In their life they saw the introduction of: home electric providers, telephones, radio, movies, automobile, air travel (from nothing to the jet age!), nuclear energy, the polio vaccine, penicillin, color photography, frozen food, and more. There are also less known changes with deep impact: the introduction of municipal garbage service cleaned up our cities and improved health, the vertical filing system revolutionized data management, Linotype made it possible to have newspapers more than 8 pages long, the tractor, artificial fertilizer, and a mass of farm inventions opened up agriculture. Home refrigerators lets people keep fresh food longer and more cheaply than ice boxes could. Modern foods ranging from cornflakes to PEZ were invented during that time. And you think the cell phone is more fundamental than, say, the widespread deployment of telephones in the first place? Before then, there was no way to have a voice conversation with someone more than a 100 meters away. When the polio vaccine was invented "church bells were ringing across the country, factories were observing moments of silence, synagogues and churches were holding prayer meetings, and parents and teachers were weeping. One shopkeeper painted a sign on his window: Thank you, Dr. Salk. 'It was as if a war had ended', one observer recalled." (Wikipedia for Jonas Salk.) That vaccine still saves the lives of 100,000s of children every year even when compared to the 1800s. For that matter, before penicillin you could die because of a rose thorn accidentally scratching your mouth, as the sad story of Albert Alexander shows. Tell me, how is the cell phone a more fundamental change than these?
- dalke 15y ago
  (typo: "even when compared to the 1980s", not 1800s. The polio vaccine "reduced the worldwide incidence from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to 1,652 cases in 2007"; Wikipedia: Polio)
- scott_s 15y ago
  These are all excellent points, but I personally think that Facebook is a fundamental change on the order of phones in everyone's homes. That is, it is changing the way that most people communicate. But, yes, overall, I think people tend to underestimate the radical changes that happened during the first half of the 20th century. By 1950, the "structure" of daily life was much closer to it was in 2000 than it was in 1900.

by saulrh 15y ago

timthorn 15y ago

> The cell phone alone is the most fundamental change in society in human history What about the railways?

iliis 15y ago
Oh, trains are pretty fundamental and changed a lot. But a device so small it fits into your pocket, let's you communicate in real time with almost everybody, takes pictures and even movies (and sends them around the world), precisely calculates not only time but your location on the whole earth, can recognize speech, songs, books and other stuff, is able to translate fast between common languages, oh, and it let's you access the whole knowledge of our entire species wherever and whenever you want... I mean, I love railways, I really do, but compared to a thing like our cell phones? It would even be possible (altough quite cumbersome), to entirely live just from this thing! (Do some programming/webdesign/consulting/whatever to make money, order food and everything else online and you don't have to do anything else.)
- timthorn 15y ago
  Clearly mobiles enable much faster communication - but in terms of societal change I believe the railways were much more important. Not only did it enable news/mail to travel much more quickly, but for the first time large numbers of people could easily visit areas beyond their immediate neigbourhood, and goods could be transported large distances within a day. It revolutionised farming and enabled the growth of cities.
- scott_s 15y ago
  Railways were more of a fundamental change than where smart phones are now. (Note I'm allowing them to be a more fundamental change in the future.) Not because of individuals taking the train, but because it allowed goods to be mass transported easier - it built fundamental infrastructure. Smart phones aren't part of fundamental infrastructure (yet!).
noonespecial 15y ago
Railways and phones are part of the same change. The ubiquitous, ever-present global network. They just had a bit less penetration and a ton more lag.

DanBC 15y ago

What about soap? (And other cleanliness inventions) Or the transistor?

schrijver 15y ago

or birth control edt: i meant this to appear underneath the comments with other pretty meaningful inventions that caused huge social change

nitrogen 15y ago

I'd argue that this generation is seeing a larger change than any before. So long as we continue on our trend of exponential technological growth, this will be tautologically true.

MPSimmons 15y ago
Despite what Ray Kurzweil thinks, I don't believe that the rate of growth is maintainable until strong AI is developed, and when that happens, we'll be irrelevant. Prior to strong AI, I think we'll level out a bit. That's presuming strong AI is possible, of course, which I think it is.
MPSimmons 15y ago
Despite what Ray Kurzweil thinks, I don't believe that the rate of growth is maintainable until strong AI is developed, and when that happens, we'll be irrelevant. Prior to strong AI, I think we'll level out a bit. That's presuming strong AI is possible, of course, which I think it is.

zem 15y ago

"human history" covers a lot of territory. in terms of fundamental changes, nothing comes close to agriculture (let population densities skyrocket, enabled pyramid-style social setups) and writing (let knowledge accumulate rapidly from generation to generation).

patrickk 15y ago
Not to mention the wheel (that ubiquitous cliche), the discovery of bronze (an alloy of copper and tin that allowed for more durable weaponry), the Haber-Bosch process; and so on.
- desas 15y ago
  Unlike computing none of those things reached near-ubiquity within one generation though.

dspillett 15y ago

* > I'd argue that this generation is seeing a larger change than any before.* I don't think the cell phone is that significant on its own, though it is up there with the changes others have mentioned. What this generation is seeing isn't one massive change: it is seeing a greater concentration of significant changes than previous generations, and some of those changes when grouped together have greater impact than they would individually.

dalke 15y ago

Consider someone who died in 1955 at the age of 70. In their life they saw the introduction of: home electric providers, telephones, radio, movies, automobile, air travel (from nothing to the jet age!), nuclear energy, the polio vaccine, penicillin, color photography, frozen food, and more. There are also less known changes with deep impact: the introduction of municipal garbage service cleaned up our cities and improved health, the vertical filing system revolutionized data management, Linotype made it possible to have newspapers more than 8 pages long, the tractor, artificial fertilizer, and a mass of farm inventions opened up agriculture. Home refrigerators lets people keep fresh food longer and more cheaply than ice boxes could. Modern foods ranging from cornflakes to PEZ were invented during that time. And you think the cell phone is more fundamental than, say, the widespread deployment of telephones in the first place? Before then, there was no way to have a voice conversation with someone more than a 100 meters away. When the polio vaccine was invented "church bells were ringing across the country, factories were observing moments of silence, synagogues and churches were holding prayer meetings, and parents and teachers were weeping. One shopkeeper painted a sign on his window: Thank you, Dr. Salk. 'It was as if a war had ended', one observer recalled." (Wikipedia for Jonas Salk.) That vaccine still saves the lives of 100,000s of children every year even when compared to the 1800s. For that matter, before penicillin you could die because of a rose thorn accidentally scratching your mouth, as the sad story of Albert Alexander shows. Tell me, how is the cell phone a more fundamental change than these?

dalke 15y ago
(typo: "even when compared to the 1980s", not 1800s. The polio vaccine "reduced the worldwide incidence from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to 1,652 cases in 2007"; Wikipedia: Polio)
scott_s 15y ago
These are all excellent points, but I personally think that Facebook is a fundamental change on the order of phones in everyone's homes. That is, it is changing the way that most people communicate. But, yes, overall, I think people tend to underestimate the radical changes that happened during the first half of the 20th century. By 1950, the "structure" of daily life was much closer to it was in 2000 than it was in 1900.