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I'd counter that certain things are expensive and as technologies change, it opens up the technology to a broader audience, which poor people can write now due

I'd counter that certain things are expensive and as technologies change, it opens up the technology to a broader audience, which poor people can write now due to changing affordability in writing due to technological changes. With paper/printing that drives literacy where the cheaper the technologies available are, the greater the population literacy. It for instance would be difficult to have a widely literate population if such population was stuck with using animal skins for paper with books being manually handwritten by educated and trained craftsmen. Products that require significant manual labor and/or space inherently bear a cost regardless of the type of economy involved, like the pyramids of Egypt (or Stonehenge, etc) are inherently expensive even though their construction pre-dates the use of currency.

Bluestein 2y ago
> it opens up the technology to a broader audience, What's that Gibson quote about the future being here, just not yet widely distributed? > with books being manually handwritten by educated and trained craftsmen. On this good point: Wonder what (many, certainly) crafts are involved in the build-up and "appearance" of the printing press? (for example).- All the (dozen) skills necessary to get to movable type, alone, for example.- PS. On a tangent: That'd be an interesting "worldview" layer for an AI - a really good sense of how technological progress has come about, in order to produce further innovations - doing multitudes-of-experts research in parallel to get to a desired outcome. That would be grand ...
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  There's an old BBC TV series called Connections that explores how technological progress happened. I think you can find most/all episodes on YouTube now.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Also from Burke, The Day the Universe Changed. He also has a recent new Connections miniseries.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      - https://archive.org/details/ConnectionsByJamesBurke https://archive.org/details/ConnectionsByJamesBurke Spreading the gospel of Burke :) As I always feel I must when "Connections" pops up, truly, an outstanding masterpiece - the original and subsequent seasons.- PS. This comment, is, in fact, totally Burke: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41087042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41087042 ... he reasons as much, in the show, from spinning wheel to printing press (and before and beyond, of course).- PSS. Featuring, as y'all certain know, the (arguably) "best timed" shot in the history of broadcast TV.-
      - mihaic 2y ago
        Nice coincidence! Last week-end I remembered watching Connections in the 1990s on TV, blowing my 7th grade mind back then, and then watched it partly out of nostalgia. I ended up binging it, and was surprised that it felt even better now. Especially the philosophical aspects felt even more important now. At the end I was a bit upset that there isn't anything like this being made, where the production treats the audience as intelligent and capable of grasping complex topics.
        Bluestein 2y ago
        I make it an actual point of rewatching the entire thing yearly.- When at some point nothing else does, that show rekindles a sense of wonder and amazement at life and its complexity that is sine qua non for me.- PS. I feel it also serves to (somehow) "frame" each of our lives - my own - as being dot-positioned as a small- yet significant - speck in a big, ongoing, neverending, marvelous, unavoidable and unstoppable march through time.- Further - and Burke makes an special point of this in one of the "framing" episodes - the individual people (that is, us) responsible for that onward march were as confused, concerned, discouraged or baffled about their future as we might be today about ours - or, oft - just trying to get by, or make a buck.- Poignantly, this might sound obvious, they, further did not know what the future held, what the consequences would be of their actions - but somehow, in lockstep - all the necessary pieces were being put together for some grand, tectonic invention or method to later appear, making their individual contributions indispensable.- I find that encouraging.-

Bluestein 2y ago

> it opens up the technology to a broader audience, What's that Gibson quote about the future being here, just not yet widely distributed? > with books being manually handwritten by educated and trained craftsmen. On this good point: Wonder what (many, certainly) crafts are involved in the build-up and "appearance" of the printing press? (for example).- All the (dozen) skills necessary to get to movable type, alone, for example.- PS. On a tangent: That'd be an interesting "worldview" layer for an AI - a really good sense of how technological progress has come about, in order to produce further innovations - doing multitudes-of-experts research in parallel to get to a desired outcome. That would be grand ...

SoftTalker 2y ago
There's an old BBC TV series called Connections that explores how technological progress happened. I think you can find most/all episodes on YouTube now.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Also from Burke, The Day the Universe Changed. He also has a recent new Connections miniseries.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    - https://archive.org/details/ConnectionsByJamesBurke https://archive.org/details/ConnectionsByJamesBurke Spreading the gospel of Burke :) As I always feel I must when "Connections" pops up, truly, an outstanding masterpiece - the original and subsequent seasons.- PS. This comment, is, in fact, totally Burke: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41087042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41087042 ... he reasons as much, in the show, from spinning wheel to printing press (and before and beyond, of course).- PSS. Featuring, as y'all certain know, the (arguably) "best timed" shot in the history of broadcast TV.-
    - mihaic 2y ago
      Nice coincidence! Last week-end I remembered watching Connections in the 1990s on TV, blowing my 7th grade mind back then, and then watched it partly out of nostalgia. I ended up binging it, and was surprised that it felt even better now. Especially the philosophical aspects felt even more important now. At the end I was a bit upset that there isn't anything like this being made, where the production treats the audience as intelligent and capable of grasping complex topics.
      - Bluestein 2y ago
        I make it an actual point of rewatching the entire thing yearly.- When at some point nothing else does, that show rekindles a sense of wonder and amazement at life and its complexity that is sine qua non for me.- PS. I feel it also serves to (somehow) "frame" each of our lives - my own - as being dot-positioned as a small- yet significant - speck in a big, ongoing, neverending, marvelous, unavoidable and unstoppable march through time.- Further - and Burke makes an special point of this in one of the "framing" episodes - the individual people (that is, us) responsible for that onward march were as confused, concerned, discouraged or baffled about their future as we might be today about ours - or, oft - just trying to get by, or make a buck.- Poignantly, this might sound obvious, they, further did not know what the future held, what the consequences would be of their actions - but somehow, in lockstep - all the necessary pieces were being put together for some grand, tectonic invention or method to later appear, making their individual contributions indispensable.- I find that encouraging.-