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Broad vaccination of populations against a variety of diseases wasn't a thing until a lot later. The antibiotics at the time were very limited and selective. B

Broad vaccination of populations against a variety of diseases wasn't a thing until a lot later. The antibiotics at the time were very limited and selective. Btw., the protests still were the thing that got the change at the time, not the technology! Seems to me any causal link is weak at best. Claiming that humans have no agency when it comes to society is rather a very strong claim that needs a lot of evidence. Usually people make the change, not technology (it wasn't machines protesting and overthrowing governments in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for example).

alexey-salmin 2y ago
> it wasn't machines protesting and overthrowing governments in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for example Curious example indeed. It wasn't machines that killed communism but its economic inferiority. Same thing that killed slavery and serfdom and feudalism and sit-at-home-women and other outdated social systems before that. People are the same as they were 2000 years ago. The economic optimum is not, largely thanks to technology.
- RandomLensman 2y ago
  Again, the people acted, not some abstract social technology - the people action created the change (contrary to your claim that it doesn't matter). Technology might help/enable to do certain things, but human action might or might not follow from that. Without human action things don't simply change (laws don't write themselves, societies don't constitute themselves from technology only, ...). The presence of different societal model at the same time with the same technologies available shows that human action makes the difference.
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    > the people action created the change (contrary to your claim that it doesn't matter). This never was my claim. Of course people action created the change. Your question was different though: > What technological breakthrough made, for example, women's suffrage possible? The answer to that is "reduction in child mortality". It didn't "create the change" but rather "made it possible" in a quite literal sense. Same with the fall of communism.
    - RandomLensman 2y ago
      > if you look closely it was break through technology that made the advancements possible, not some social rights protest Edit: yes, sorry, not your claim but the claim under discussion Reads to me like social protest makes nothing possible, You so far advanced a hypothesis on suffrage, but not more.
      - alexey-salmin 2y ago
        Well for one thing I didn't write that.
ocschwar 2y ago
> Usually people make the change, not technology (it wasn't machines protesting and overthrowing governments in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for example One of the triggering events of 1989 was a Japanese man walking to a university in Prague, putting a box of new modems in a student lounge and walking away.

alexey-salmin 2y ago

> it wasn't machines protesting and overthrowing governments in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for example Curious example indeed. It wasn't machines that killed communism but its economic inferiority. Same thing that killed slavery and serfdom and feudalism and sit-at-home-women and other outdated social systems before that. People are the same as they were 2000 years ago. The economic optimum is not, largely thanks to technology.

RandomLensman 2y ago
Again, the people acted, not some abstract social technology - the people action created the change (contrary to your claim that it doesn't matter). Technology might help/enable to do certain things, but human action might or might not follow from that. Without human action things don't simply change (laws don't write themselves, societies don't constitute themselves from technology only, ...). The presence of different societal model at the same time with the same technologies available shows that human action makes the difference.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  > the people action created the change (contrary to your claim that it doesn't matter). This never was my claim. Of course people action created the change. Your question was different though: > What technological breakthrough made, for example, women's suffrage possible? The answer to that is "reduction in child mortality". It didn't "create the change" but rather "made it possible" in a quite literal sense. Same with the fall of communism.
  - RandomLensman 2y ago
    > if you look closely it was break through technology that made the advancements possible, not some social rights protest Edit: yes, sorry, not your claim but the claim under discussion Reads to me like social protest makes nothing possible, You so far advanced a hypothesis on suffrage, but not more.
    - alexey-salmin 2y ago
      Well for one thing I didn't write that.

ocschwar 2y ago

> Usually people make the change, not technology (it wasn't machines protesting and overthrowing governments in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for example One of the triggering events of 1989 was a Japanese man walking to a university in Prague, putting a box of new modems in a student lounge and walking away.