On another note, I can't imagine what it would feel like to see something that was invented a few years before your death is still somewhat used when you're 'resurrected' 70 years later. An electronic gadget, no less.
She's not laughing, she's crying because it makes her realize she's old to see a generation that doesn't recognize the three-colored input cables from before HDMI.
On another note, I can't imagine what it would feel like to see something that was invented a few years before your death is still somewhat used when you're 'resurrected' 70 years later. An electronic gadget, no less.
This would actually be quite common as for all the talk the pace of fundamental technological discovery has slowed massively in the second half of the century. There is almost nothing common in the modern world someone from say 1950 would not recognize as a mere refinement of something they knew of or used beside maybe integrated circuits, although they would understand what a computer is and perhaps the concept of solid state computing if they were well educated.
This would actually be quite common as for all the talk the pace of fundamental technological discovery has slowed massively in the second half of the century. There is almost nothing common in the modern world someone from say 1950 would not recognize as a mere refinement of something they knew of or used beside maybe integrated circuits, although they would understand what a computer is and perhaps the concept of solid state computing if they were well educated.
Radically new technologies haven't come into existence, but the existing ones have been refined to incredible levels, which has allowed qualitative changes in what tech ordinary people can use and what they can do with it. A modern cell phone isn't a fundamentally different technology - it's just computing, radio, battery, and LCD - but it allows you to do things that just would not be possible with a computer the size of a room, a radio that's so big it needs to be installed in a car and with a data rate of 300 baud on a good day, or a black-and-white LCD with pixels a millimeter wide.
This would actually be quite common as for all the talk the pace of fundamental technological discovery has slowed massively in the second half of the century. There is almost nothing common in the modern world someone from say 1950 would not recognize as a mere refinement of something they knew of or used beside maybe integrated circuits, although they would understand what a computer is and perhaps the concept of solid state computing if they were well educated.
Even on board of ships, the thing used to calculate a firing solution for cannons were computers, just mechanical ones...so yeah, they would obviously recognise what a computer is
Even on board of ships, the thing used to calculate a firing solution for cannons were computers, just mechanical ones...so yeah, they would obviously recognise what a computer is
Except the visual presentation and the compactness would disorient them.
"You mean THIS can do the same thing a way BIGGER version does?! And even better?! I'm so glad to be alive again to see this!"
Except the visual presentation and the compactness would disorient them.
"You mean THIS can do the same thing a way BIGGER version does?! And even better?! I'm so glad to be alive again to see this!"
Mithiwithi said:
Radically new technologies haven't come into existence, but the existing ones have been refined to incredible levels, which has allowed qualitative changes in what tech ordinary people can use and what they can do with it. A modern cell phone isn't a fundamentally different technology - it's just computing, radio, battery, and LCD - but it allows you to do things that just would not be possible with a computer the size of a room, a radio that's so big it needs to be installed in a car and with a data rate of 300 baud on a good day, or a black-and-white LCD with pixels a millimeter wide.
Way to pick the ONE exception that I noted, but lets ignore the often overblown impact of consumer electronic technology for a moment. Consider a normal day, lets say you lost your phone the day before. Consider what you use and encouter during that day and consider how much of it is basically the same shit with a new coat of paint as a century ago. -You get up in the morning and flip on your lights in the way someone from the early 1900s would -You go take a crap in your toilet that would be recognizable to someone from the late 1800s -You put on a cotton shirt and denim pants that someone from the 1800s would recognize -You adjust the thermostat because it's a bit nippy, this you do by pushing a rubber bottom next to an LCD display instead of turning a mechanical knob like someone a century ago might -You take a shower, shave with your disposable steel razor, and brush your teeth in a way that hasn't changed in going on a century. -You get in your gas powered car that someone from 1920 could drive without much issue because it's changed that little and head to work -You work a shift in a kitchen using equipment that a short order cook from the 20s would recognize in an instant. Ah but what's this, the order slips pinned up in front of you have been printed out instead of scrawled on a notepad. Much advancement very wow! -Your delayed on the way home because a road crew using power tools and construction machinery that's been around since the 20s again is working. -You cook your dinner in a kitchen whose appliance have no in any meaningful way changed in functionality in often going on a century, adding a stupid LCD screen to muddle their usage does not count. -You sit on a couch and watch a TV that's different only in resolution and color range from one 60 years old in terms of functionality, your remote does have more bottoms then one older then about 40 years though. -You get a headache so you pop some aspirin before bed -You go to bed on your mattress which is in most cases nothing but a bunch of padded steel springs and which hasn't changed in a century and flop your head down on a pillow stuffed with bird feathers that someone from the middle ages would recognize.
You have done nothing today that is appreciably different from someone in say the mid 50s. We like to think our current generation is so damn clever and hype up all the "progress" we're making, but it's all illusion by and large. A societal case of the emperors new clothes.
@Tk3997: I stand by my statement that incremental and quantitative advances have enabled new uses of technology that wouldn't be possible in the past, even if the fundamental technologies are based on groundbreaking science that predates 1950.
I think the concept you're looking for is that there haven't been much in the way of technologies based on new science, that everything we've built since 1950 could be explained with principles described in 1950's college science textbooks...
In which case I would insist that the slowing pace of scientific advancement is that we've nearly run out of new science to discover - the frontiers of fundamentally new science require energies or energy densities that are unimaginably beyond our current technology. And the few new science bits, like the discovery of the Higgs boson, don't point the way to much in the way of new technology.
And thus, advancements in technology, while remaining substantial, are dependent on incremental advances rather than fundamental new breakthroughs.
You have done nothing today that is appreciably different from someone in say the mid 50s. We like to think our current generation is so damn clever and hype up all the "progress" we're making, but it's all illusion by and large. A societal case of the emperors new clothes.
If you set the bar so high that only "the invention of modern computers" counts as "a real invention of a new technology", and nothing like The Internet or laser-based storage mediums or the Human Genome Project or Quantum Physics counts, then you have to put that same metric to use across all of history... and there's still an extremely concentrated burst of invention in the past three centuries (since the Industrial Revolution) that outweighs the technological progress of the whole few hundred thousand years of human existence, combined. (Although, granted, you could maybe argue that the Agricultural Revolution counts as larger since you would hypothetically count things like "inventing the wheel", but even that was spread over thousands of years...)
Society wouldn't last if every new thing that came along was somehow a truly revolutionary force that shook society to its foundation.
There's also the problem that, yes, computers hypothetically existed in the 40's, but nobody practically used them or considered them in daily life until a few generations of those refinements you dismiss as insignificant. The truly revolutionary things that are being invented today aren't going to be practical or useful until another 50 years of refinement. Again, there's that whole Human Genome Project that's just a scientific curiosity now, but could have revolutionary applications a couple generations down the line when people start coming up with true cures for heart disease and cancer somewhere down the road.
Likewise, if you're blaming a generation, you have to wait until they're actually adults to count it. It's more than a little unfair to tell a twelve-year-old (like RaiDen apparently are) that their generation sucks because one of them hasn't invented cold fusion yet. If there's a lag in the rate of invention, it's our generation's fault, not theirs.
Way to pick the ONE exception that I noted, but lets ignore the often overblown impact of consumer electronic technology for a moment. Consider a normal day, lets say you lost your phone the day before. Consider what you use and encouter during that day and consider how much of it is basically the same shit with a new coat of paint as a century ago.
Ahaha. But innovations are innovations and inventions are inventions. Even if they're improvements from innovations seen from the past. Because one invention came from a previous one.
Tk3997 said:
You have done nothing today that is appreciably different from someone in say the mid 50s. We like to think our current generation is so damn clever and hype up all the "progress" we're making, but it's all illusion by and large. A societal case of the emperors new clothes.
Bullshit. You don't know how hard it is to innovate and invent, let alone discover something that will have a significant impact to humanity. Every innovation and invention from way back started from previous inventions. Denying them for the sake of saying nothing major has been done today is just silly and elitist.
We don't have fusion power yet that can potentially end our dependence to the sun, so we can just move elsewhere the moment it starts being omnicidal to Earth.
Nothing different from the mid 50s? Our life expectancy is longer than half a century ago because of medicine advances. Our travel and communication periods are quicker because the technology improved. Our way to consume foods are different because there has been technology backing that up.
Making circuits smaller and efficient is an invent, traveling longer with improved fuels is another, food processing in mass without it contaminating into the elaboration chain are more invents.
Our lifestyles change with every new invent without us realizing. It's absurd to say we haven't done anything different from the 50s. We work at home, we inform quicker than watching TV or reading the newspaper, we entertain with more than the only living room TV at home. We aren't done at 35 if you weren't married with a good job by then, and all those society changes are because new inventions make possible not to live like in 1950's anymore.
When I attended school atoms were only groups of protons, neutrons and electrons... that's it. Now there is a Large Hadron Collider studying atom SUBparticles that you never heard about from last century basic education books. The evolution of technology and nanotechnology isn't something you simply brush off because "buh, it looks to me the same but smaller".
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Ashigara-san, why are you crying?They're always being called over to play a whole bunch!There's a whole bunch of strings that I've never seen coming out of this.That's what you'd call a...
Game Link Cable.The tri-coloured dealies are the AV connectors; it's HDMI these days.The guy with the Link Cables was a real hero, yeah?The guy who had the 4-way adaptor was the best!pofDon't you know it!Whatever could these be?