The New World

[DrAg0n]

haha...well, at least most of it...

 

[Empath]

The "similar threads" feature brought this thread back to my attention. With the recent threads regarding what's permitted in the Cafe, and the reminiscence of the earlier days of CPF, I thought I would would bump it, to show the depth of discussions we would involve ourselves back then.

The deeper discussions brought plenty of opportunity to reference politics, religions, and other topics without the divisive rhetoric that so often becomes a part of the threads of depth today.

 

[ASheep]

Wow, I am truly amazed to see a part of the internet free of flaming, and mindless fanboy-ism. Thanks Empath, for both starting the thread all those years ago, and for necro-bumping it.

Slightly more on topic, I subscribe to the Hawking school of thought: we really have to work out a way to spread the human race to other planets, as we truly have all our eggs in one basket, and a rather fragile basket at that.

Even more on topic:
I think the human mind has changed vastly in the last few hundred years, not on a physical level, but in that we are using more of our minds. To understand modern technology even on a basic level, as well as the precursor technologies, there are a great many concepts that we must comprehend, which a specimen of homo sapiens 2000 years ago would not be able to fathom.
The vast amount of conditioning the human mind undergoes from an early age in our society is continuously stretching our capacity to learn and understand our environment, and this mental evolution is far more noticeable than a physical evolution in such a short period of time.

 

[LuxLuthor]

Very interesting. I bet those of you around then do miss that environment a lot. LOL...the first thing I noticed though, was the poster right above you "Dragon" shows as banned which is a little fly in the ointment.

I think most startup online communities began in small numbers among friends and able to establish a foundation of friendship and shared appreciation of similar interests, and grew up together as a family. Once it reaches a critical mass and so many new (and perhaps some younger) people stop by, they don't have the relationship that breeds respect and gives a reserve of good will to overlook their quirks.

It reminds me of listening to my mother-in-law talking about how she knew everyone in the town of Mystic, CT most of her life. As it grew and people separated into their own communities and neighborhoods, she says it stopped feeling like home, and people seemed to stop caring about each other.

Even still, there are an exceptional number of really generous and wonderful people here at CPF. That is a tribute to the environment the mods and admins ongoingly cultivate.

 

[HarryN]

A fascinating thread from the past. For those that are interested in the original topics, there was a show on several years back called "connections" or something similar. It attempted to show how some of these things came together.

Similarly, try some computer games like "civilization" or "sim city". Its pretty interesting what works, and what doesn't.

 

[StarHalo]

Photonboy had it right in the second thread; we mass produced the food, made the tools, the tools made more tools, the tools become more widespread, we wrote down the ideas, gathered all the writings in one place, sent all the writings all over the place, and we were off and running..

The biggest obstacles to progress were/are poor location, data loss, and religion/cultural belief.

 

[jtr1962]

I would say Star Halo is correct. The pace of technological advance keeps increasing largely because information becomes easier and cheaper to store and retrieve.

Millenia ago, all we had were stone tablets. Durable for sure, but very time-consuming to encode information on, thus limiting the amount of information which could be stored. Then we invented paper. Much less labor intensive, but unfortunately also less durable. The lack of durability wouldn't have mattered if duplication ( redundancy ) were easy but it wasn't. Scribes were expensive, and took months to copy a book.

The big revolution in knowledge came with the printing press. Now redundancy was easy. Make sufficient copies of a book, store them at different locations, and losing the information becomes nearly impossible. Still, books required paper and cost a bit of money, so access to knowledge still wasn't widespead. Nevertheless, printing set in motion a much faster pace of technological advancement.

Computers and data storage finally made storing and disseminating knowledge accessible to the masses. Now anyone can afford sufficient storage for encyclopedias of information. Moreover, the Internet makes easily accessible the collective works of the human race. Anyone can see anyone else's ideas, and build upon them.

So in the end, it's the cost and ease with which information can be stored and retrieved which really determines human process. Since information technology is intimately tied to the state of other human technology ( i.e. computers couldn't exist unless the electrical infrastructure, mining of raw materials and so forth had been put in place by previous generations ), it makes sense that each new advance bootstraps from a previous one. Next revolution-3D printers. They already exist to make objects from plastic. Eventually they'll be able to work with a variety of materials. More importantly, the costs will come down. Eventually, all you'll need if you want something is a 3D computer model and a 3D printer. Suddenly hard goods, perhaps also food, will become much cheaper and more accessible. I've heard we may even one day make buildings using a variation on 3D printers.

Another secondary theme to this topic is what constitutes progress? Are we really better off in all ways now than our ancestors, or only in some ways? I'm too tired right now to think about this. Maybe more tomorrow.

 

[LuxLuthor]

I vote for wider scale communication and mass printing so people could see what was going on "out there," and became a way to capture, learn, and publicize new ideas. Otherwise everything was done by messenger and verbal transmission of information.

It's one thing for Ceasar to give a speech at the coliseum, it's a whole other thing to have all the details captured in writing, being able to be widely read and understood throughout the larger regions.

Reading other people's expressions and ideas stimulates your own thinking and gave new ways to invent things and enlist the diverse necessary support to get them done. If you could write down how to make a boat that worked well, it could be made by others some of whom would have an idea for improvement. Making lists of where various resources can be found and how to obtain and use them became something you could pass on to others. It essentially opened up the possibility that one person, or a small group of people could share their accomplishments and ideas with wide arenas of others which began a cascade of demand for more progress, products, and results.

 

[StarHalo]

Don't forget the Phaistos Disk:

Meanwhile in Crete around 1700BC, you had some unknown group of people who made the Phaistos Disk, a clay disk featuring an array of symbols pressed into its face using stamps/dies of some kind. Printed text, using a mass-printing method, 2,400 years before the Chinese invented stone printing blocks, and 3,000 years before the Gutenberg bible. But whatever society produced it was apparently so small that it never even had the chance to pass on the technology, what the disk says, means, who it came from, all a complete mystery, died out from a tribe too small.

The Phaistos Disk: