Because middle managers in meetings were accusing innovators of reinventing the cube.
Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
91–100 of 158 posts
Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
After initially being skeptical and disliking him for libertarian leaning political reasons, I've come around to wondering if John Maynard Keynes might have been even more right than we have imagined. Slave labor is kind of an extreme case of the paradox of thrift. Slaves have no disposable capital and they flood the labor market down to zero. Slavery is like a permanent deflationary spiral. There is just no reason t…
kinda describes what's going on in developing countries too. The lack of innovation in developing country might have almost nothing to do with the previously popular and highly peddled concept of "inferior races"
Humans are wired for scarcity, but scarcity thinking is bad economics. We need to realize and own our power and start thinking in positive sum race to the top terms instead of fear based austerity terms.
Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
#93One of the most fascinating books I ever picked up from the library was Ancient Inventions ( https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Inventions-Peter-James/dp/034... ), which goes over the details of stuff like this. The historical figure that strikes me as "most likely to be a time traveller" is Archimedes, who designed incredibly advanced machines that destroyed the Roman fleet and protected his home city. Sadly he was acci…
Unfortunately? Entertainment and art give many people a significant reason to live.
Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
#94I often like to fantasize how would I fare if I found myself suddenly transported into medieval times or earlier (spoiler: poorly). Articles like this make me appreciate even more how little difference there is between us and humans thousands of years ago. I wouldn't have figured out how to make a working wheel, and I've seen one. I have no idea where I picked up the idea that "ancient civilizations were dumb", but t…
> I often like to fantasize how would I fare if I found myself suddenly transported into medieval times or earlier I wonder the same. If I was suddenly teleported to the middle of a forest, without anything, not even my shoes and clothes, and no chance of any contact with civilization again, what SHOULD my first few tasks even be?? Imagine a modern human, ideal in health and strength and faculties, and immune to dise…
Actually, Terry Pratchett's _The Long Mars_ discusses this, to an extent.
(In that setting, you can build a very simple machine --- powered by a potato, which actually makes sense in context --- which can take you to a parallel Earth. You can take what you can carry with you; but not iron, which stays behind. Turns out that setting up a society from scratch using only hand tools and brain power is kinda hard.)
Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
#95I often like to fantasize how would I fare if I found myself suddenly transported into medieval times or earlier (spoiler: poorly). Articles like this make me appreciate even more how little difference there is between us and humans thousands of years ago. I wouldn't have figured out how to make a working wheel, and I've seen one. I have no idea where I picked up the idea that "ancient civilizations were dumb", but t…
> spoiler: poorly
And vice versa.
We spend most of our time either learning to be a cog in society's machine, or being that cog.
Most of today's cogs are useless in ancient times. "What is this 'full stack' you speak of, stranger?"
Most of the past's cogs are useless today. "So you're good with sticks on wet clay? Cool story bro."
Either stranger could adapt to the times, but they'd be very inefficient because they'd never be fully integrated to the larger machine, having to relearn every interaction that a native just takes for "the way things are."
Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes that's probably why the industrial revolution didn't happen. There's a good comment below that explains other societal reasons why the industrial revolution didn't happen, like the lack of contract law and investors. I also read a great theory once (but I can't find it again through google!) that the industrial revolution really required the invention of the cannon first. Building an efficient steam engine in rom…
I've heard it said that the bicycle basically needed the car, despite seeming to be much simpler: accurate mass production of ball bearings, chain drives, and pneumatic tires were all driven by car manufacturing but needed for really practical bicycles.
> I've heard it said that the bicycle basically needed the car
Interestingly our roads were built with bicycles in mind:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2011/aug/1...
Many similar sources such as:
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/12/the-secret-history-of...
Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two really good literature treatments of your fantasy are Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Jules Verne's Mysterious Island. They both have as major plot elements a character who has a lot of knowledge of fabrication techniques, and recreate their technology in a primitive situation (one involves time travel, the other is stranded on a primitive island). On another note, I've heard that the…
Based on the old wooden wagons I've seen, lathes played no part in their construction. The spokes on the wheels had been spokeshaved (gee, maybe that's the etymology of that tool's name?) rather than turned on a lathe. The wheels as a whole were pieced together by hand so they'd be round automatically (i.e. spokes and rim segments were all the same length, held together by an iron hoop that just took shape around the…
If solid rather than spoked wheels were acceptable, an out-of-round wheel on an axle can be marked with a piece of chalk-rock held in place while spinning the wheel, and then abrasive stones can be used to true the wheel to the chalk mark.
That is a rudimentary lathe.
Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve heard of bootstrapping a machine shop from a lathe as well—apparently there’s a series about it, written by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Gingery
Gingery did even better than showing how to bootstrap from a lathe. He showed how to bootstrap the lathe itself starting from building a charcoal foundry and chunks of raw metal. Be careful, though: this is a rabbit hole that draws maker-types like rare earth electromagnets. Once you read through Gingery's books, you can easily find yourself wandering down the library stacks and Net pulling up information about how t…
If you have a lathe now, how long will it take for that lathe to disintegrate into complete irreparable unusability?
With a fertility rate of 1.3 among the intelligent (read: technologically capable) peoples of the world, we are far more likely to run out of people to maintain the technology than we are to run out of the energy to power it.
Indeed, if you walk into any utility company or similar, who do you see doing all the work? Middle-aged-to-old working-class white men. What happens when those men retire? Who is going to hold the infrastructure together?
Unlike a civilization-wide energy crash, this is not merely a rhetorical question.
Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes that's probably why the industrial revolution didn't happen. There's a good comment below that explains other societal reasons why the industrial revolution didn't happen, like the lack of contract law and investors. I also read a great theory once (but I can't find it again through google!) that the industrial revolution really required the invention of the cannon first. Building an efficient steam engine in rom…
I've heard it said that the bicycle basically needed the car, despite seeming to be much simpler: accurate mass production of ball bearings, chain drives, and pneumatic tires were all driven by car manufacturing but needed for really practical bicycles.
But bicycles are useful on their own (possibly more so in a world where cars do not exist), so the existence of bicycles alone could easily have driven innovation.
In fact, Dunlop invented the pneumatic tire for his son's tricycle and they were initially used for bicycles (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_Dunlop#Pneumatic_t...)
Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I know, the romans never used semaphore. Maybe for practical reasons like not having telescopes, but maybe the idea just didn't occur to them. It would be pretty low hanging fruit for time travelers to introduce.
I think it was more due to not solving any problem. Same way despite Greeks inventing steam power, no one made engine from it cause there was no need. Too many slaves provided needed labor. Runners, horses, ships moved communications fast enough. Even if you knew ceaser was coming to Rome, transport speed meant you couldnt do much with that. And yes we with hindsight cab cherry pick situations where it would help. Bu…
But building and maintaining a semaphore system in a world that has slavery and where wood is cheap and plentiful (Caesar could build a bridge over the Rhine in 10 days, and that includes going out to find and chop down trees that are large enough) isn't that expensive.
The local HFT community would probably pay for a semaphore system. A lot of money could be made on knowing the outcome of events earlier than others.
On the other hand, "trees are plentiful" probably meant that sight lines were awful. Maybe, a semaphore only becomes feasible after one has cut down most of the trees.