I agree. Somebody from 1915 would already understand the paradigm shift brought by the industrial revolution. The notion of decomposing problems into small, spe

I agree. Somebody from 1915 would already understand the paradigm shift brought by the industrial revolution. The notion of decomposing problems into small, specialized tasks and delegating to people and other resources was familiar. Consider these technologies and innovations that had already been developed: * Jacquard loom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom) * Player pianos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_piano http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_piano) * Widespread use of interchangeable parts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchangeable_parts#Late_19th_and_early_20th_centuries:_dissemination_throughout_manufacturing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchangeable_parts#Late_19th...) * Assembly lines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_line) * Tabulating machine for the 1890 US Census (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine) * Transoceanic telegraph networks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_telegraph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_telegraph) * Use of humans for distributed computation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer) Automated computation is an amazing concept, but--at the risk of historic bias--what we have now is merely an optimized and widely available form of what we had then. What I imagine they'd have a really difficult time accepting is modern physics, particularly quantum theory. Then again, the vast majority of the public today (including me) struggles with it.