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The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

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Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#101

Post by Retric »

jacobolus wrote: post #60
Retric wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of people vastly overestimate how well they learn things without the feedback of formal education. Easier on its own is therefore effectively meaningless when people aren’t actually learning beyond the most superficial layers.

> overestimate how well they learn things without the feedback of formal education People benefit greatly from external human feedback, but 1:1 tutoring (with a good tutor) is roughtly an order of magnitude more effective and efficient than a classroom, and classrooms themselves vary wildly; in general the more participatory the better. Self learning without any help can be more effective and efficient than a typical…

Formal education is wider than just 15+ people classrooms. Apprenticeships don’t require removing people from the workforce, but they require feedback to function well not just watching a master craftsman.

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#102

Post by killerstorm »

MPSimmons wrote: post #94
toast0 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Steve Job’s “reality distortion field” was coined after the ability to get people to achieve the impossible and deliver better products; I was under the impression it was about Steve convincing the faithful that Apple invented the categories of products they sold, rather than simply delivering better products in existing categories.

It was coined by Apple engineers who would agree to whatever Steve wanted them to do while Steve was at their desk, and then when he left they'd be distraught over what they'd agreed to. https://www.folklore.org/Reality_Distortion_Field.html

Hmm, that's basically a fancy way to describe psychological pressure and persuasion.

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#103

Post by aleph_minus_one »

ekelsen wrote: post #16

I wish school curriculum included things like "how printing actually worked through ages". Monks writing out manuscripts is somewhat relatable since we all (at least for now) still learn how to write. Everyone is taught the Gutenberg press was a big deal -- but how did it actually work? Why was it still a pain and how did later inventions fix those problems?

> I wish school curriculum included things like "how printing actually worked through ages". [...] Everyone is taught the Gutenberg press was a big deal -- but how did it actually work?

Just go to technological museums in cities near you: there you can see and learn all these things.

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#104

Post by ekelsen »

WalterBright wrote: post #39
ekelsen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really awesome! Did they have you try and typeset something by hand? I feel like for us it presented as some magical thing that made producing books trivially easy, whereas in reality typesetting a page was still very labor intensive and not that fast!

The printer setup is where all the cost is, the printing itself is practically free.

I think even the printing was still not _that_ fast. You needed to physically press down each page. Make sure the ink was right, replace the paper, make sure not to smudge anything, etc.

I'd be surprised if they could average more than 2 pages / minute? Which for 1000 pages is still a full days work.

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#105

Post by bell-cot »

tremon wrote: post #98
bell-cot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And at least as important are the surrounding economic, social, and archival systems for printed information. How much of the populace was literate? Was there licensing (for copyists or printers), copyright, public domain, or public libraries? Distribution systems? What sorts of material were being copied or printed? And how long did those materials physically last? My understanding is that there's a vast amount that…

All of those considerations are predicated on having the printing press first. There is little value in advanced literacy if written knowledge is rare or hard to come by. There is no need for licensing if verbatim copying takes a lifetime rather than an afternoon. Why would someone need an elaborate distribution system if their output is limited to (let's say) 2 books/year?

> All those considerations are predicated on having the printing press first.

Not true. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria Scribes are just lower efficiency, like wood-burning railroad trains vs. horse-drawn wagons.

Not sure what you mean by "advanced literacy", but credible experts seem to put literacy rates in Ancient Rome (zero printing presses) in the neighborhood of 20%. If you consider how little demand (for printed material) there could be from slaves, rural peasants, and such - that's damned high.

You seem focused on books with enormous page counts, requiring 6 months to a lifetime to copy. That's really not how societies without modern (ultra-cheap) printing technology did things. Same as their horse-drawn carriages didn't weigh anywhere near what a modern SUV does.

(Yes, hand-copied Bibles were big. And rare. Are you trying to judge the size and cost of typical medieval buildings by the surviving the cathedrals and castles?)

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#106

Post by bcjdjsndon »

> I’d argue that there’s a clear line connecting the automation of typesetting and counting in the late 19th century to the rise of electrical computers a generation later, and then the early Internet and AI research a generation after that.

And I'd argue that's very generous.

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#107

Post by bcjdjsndon »

arbuge wrote: post #13

> 3) Transformative technologies succeed by redesigning a task, and usually not by simply trying to reproduce the existing forms of human labor. Paige built an amazingly complex mechanical imitation of the human compositor which attempted to repeat a human worker’s actual movements. By contrast, Linotype simplified the problem by doing something humans didn’t already do. That would in fact be the main argument agains…

> That would in fact be the main argument against humanoid robots in many (most?) applications.

Buy one robot, use it for many things, is an attractive proposition I think

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#108

Post by bcjdjsndon »

fwipsy wrote: post #17

It's pretty ironic to read about Twain losing his fortune to bad investments, after satirizing sketchy investments in "The Gilded Age."

But he sounded so clever with his quippy little lines... America loves appearances more than the reality

Re: The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life

#109

Post by mirmor23 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #92

> but his main talent appeared to have been his skill at raising money by promising the impossible — the 19th century version of Steve Job’s reality distortion field. That’s a wild mischaracterization. Steve Job’s “reality distortion field” was coined after the ability to get people to achieve the impossible and deliver better products; quite the opposite of funneling money into dead end ideas.

> That’s a wild mischaracterization. Steve Job’s “reality distortion field” was coined after the ability to get people to achieve the impossible and deliver better products; quite the opposite of funneling money into dead end ideas.

Apple is widely successful, and their products are highly regarded so it's a good spot to be in.

I always find it strange when 'achieve the impossible' tag is attached to him or the products that came along. take iphone for example - there were ton of products that were way ahead of their time way before iphone came along - palmpilot (grafitti handwriting), handspring, hp pocketpc (a buddy of mine had a working vnc client on it during days of wifi infancy), and of course the original blackberry.

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