How old is our reliance on technology?

[Gewehr98]

I saw an episode of "Connections" where James Burke displayed a working version of a late 1800s facimile (fax) machine.   Not to be outdone, here's an original cell phone, GPS, ammo clip, and M4 carbine: 

[charby]

I like it.. 

[Perd Hapley]

Our reliance is as old as we are, just about.

The more interesting question is how long we have depended on tech that relies on someone to sell us batteries, pump electrical juice into our house, fix our new-fangled fax machines, and so forth. 


Your telegraph machine is more like a land-line phone or fax, not at all like a cell phone.  The compass isn't a GPS unless you've got a map and protractor to go with it. 

[Gewehr98]

I figured Fistful would throw that my direction.  It's ok - I still see the "connection" (Thank you, James Burke!) to our current versions of those devices. 

I feel the collection there is pretty close to the oldest variant of a current technology, obviously with limitations. 

The telegraph repeater there is about close as one can get to our current dependancy on telephones/cellphones/blackberries, without jumping back to Pony Express riders or smoke signals from relay towers and hilltops. That particular telegraph sounder dates back to the 1870s, and I usually have it wired into a lighting detector circuit.  When the summertime thunderstorms approach here in Wisconsin, it starts clicking out a tempo well in advance of the lightning show. 

The compass took us that extra step when it came time to navigate across the oceans, we weren't totally dependant on watching the interaction of the waves or waiting for a cloudless night to find the North Star.

Black powder took hunting/killing/warfare etc. to the next level.  The Sharps (and the Trapdoor Springfield), likewise, heralded metallic centerfire cartridge use, along with the benefit of loading a firearm rapidly from the breech - which added momentum to the concept and gave us other folks like John Moses Browning, Hiram Maxim, Mikhail Kalashnikov, and Eugene Stoner.  The Sharps also survived the transition from black powder to smokeless, which in itself was an important innovation. 

Ok, now it's somebody else's turn to upload a photo of something vintage and make the "connection" to our current lives.   

[MechAg94]

Considering tool making is one of the things that has allowed us to spread across the globe, I'd say quite a long time.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Two new developments came about at roughly the same time which allowed us to live the lives we do today.  The first of those was "natural philosophy", which was the beginning of the science and research that taught us how to design our modern technological wonders.  The second was the invention of modern commerce, things such as corporations and financial markets.  This provided us the access to wealth we needed in order to build and buy all these new technological widgets.  Both of these revolutions sprung out of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.  This time marked the beginning of the transition away from entire populations of self-sufficient and non-technology dependent people.  The American Civil War was probably the end of that transition, the time when it became painfully obvious to all that the old self-sufficient agrarian lifestyle was obsolete.

[Perd Hapley]

Regarding the compass, I see what you're trying to say and I'll cede the point due to my ignorance of the history of navigation.  You may be wrong, for all I know, but you may be right.  Sorry, the wife makes me listen to Billy Joel.

Anyway, the telegraph is to the cell phone what the trebuchet is to the assault rifle.  The cell phone and rifle you can take anywhere, ready to use.  The telegraph and trebuchet require extensive construction in place before you have anything useful.  For a real analog to the cell-phone, try semafore, a bull-horn, walkie-talkies; all things you can take with you and are ready to go when you need to use them. 

Now that I think about it, cell phones and telegraphs both require some heavy hardware (cell towers and telegraph lines) to be installed ahead of time. Maybe they're closer than I at first thought. 

[280plus]

You're forgetting smoke signals...

drums...

[Art Eatman]

Wasn't it Marco Polo who brought back the "secret" of black powder, from China?  They had it, but aside from fireworks and rockets for amusement, they didn't really use it otherwise.

The compass is fairly old.  Even with the compass, however, the inability to tell time in any accurate fashion inhibited navigation.  At least for the Europeans; the Pacific islanders were masters at using the stars in cross-ocean travel.

Another connection is the sequence from Napoleon's need to feed his troops (via canned goods after the invention of canning) on to air conditioning (invented at Appalachicola, Florida) to imported meat (refirgerated ships).

The reason for clocks and all that gearworks was so they'd know the proper time for prayers at the monastery.  (Also from "Connections")

Art

[Sindawe]

Our reliance is as old as we are, just about.

Exactly, and it dates from the days when this was the cutting edge of high technology.



Source: http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=1585222

[280plus]

Those are some beautiful points...

[roo_ster]

Connections & James Burke is entertaining, as is the schlep Jared Diamond of "Guns Germs & Steel" fame.

Burke & Diamond tease a narrative out of history and present just-so stories to buttress their POV.  Like I said, entertaining.  Also heavily manipulative.

GGS: "Hey, there's a new* paradigm that geography determines a civilizations' success!  Who'd a thunk it?*"

Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of sheer will or intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions.
...
Hence Eurasia was able to support larger, denser populations, which made trade easier and technological progress faster than in other regions. These economic and technological advantages eventually enabled Europeans to conquer the peoples of the other continents in recent centuries.

*  The "geography shapes it all" POV has been around so long it has acquired its own jargon: environmental determinism.

Environmental determinism's origins go back to antiquity, when the Greek geographer Strabo wrote that climate influences the psychological disposition of different races. Similar ideas continued to be propounded up into the modern era.

Environmental determinism rose to prominence in the late 1800s and early 1900s when it was taken up as a central theory by the discipline of geography (and to a lesser extent, anthropology). Clark University professor Ellen Churchill Semple is credited with introducing the theory to the United States after studying with human geographer Friedrich Ratzel in Germany. The prominence of determinism was influenced by the high profile of evolutionary biology, although it tended more to resemble the now-discredited Lamarckism rather than Darwinism.

The fundamental argument of the environmental determinists was that aspects of physical geography, particularly that of climate, influenced the psychological mind-set of individuals, which in turn defined the behaviour and culture of the society that those individuals formed.

[K Frame]

Connections is possibly the greatest single survey show on world history that has ever been made. Not because it's so in-depth, but because it shows clearly that virtually no single event occurrs in a vacuum.

And it's quite the stretch to say that a compass is equivilent to GPS.

A sextant and a chronograph?

Yeah, I'd be up for that.

[K Frame]

The compass is fairly old.  Even with the compass, however, the inability to tell time in any accurate fashion inhibited navigation.  At least for the Europeans; the Pacific islanders were masters at using the stars in cross-ocean travel.

Not even close, Art. Europeans, in the form of Vikings and other water races, were masters of star navigation.

The Greeks were quite efficient at star navigation, as well.

[Matthew Carberry]

I also really enjoyed Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed" series.

It steps beyond the technology itself to the shifts in perception and thought that made some of the new tech possible.

As I was double checking the name I saw that the episodes are now available as podcasts for download.  

[Art Eatman]

At the risk of talking past one another, Mike:  Without the chronometer, it was difficult to accurately predict a landfall when sailing north-south.  Via the Pole Star, one could have a pretty good idea of latitude, but absent telling time it was difficult fo discern longitude.  Prior to the sextant, anyway.

Art

[Perd Hapley]

It always comes back to sex for you two, doesn't it?  Sigh. 

[Gewehr98]

Burke & Diamond tease a narrative out of history and present just-so stories to buttress their POV.  Like I said, entertaining.  Also heavily manipulative.

I don't know who Diamond is, but I give the Oxford-educated James Burke a bit more credit than labeling his work as a "just-so" story.  His efforts are just a smidgen more than the average Kevin Bacon "6 Degrees of Separation" connections, if you know what I mean.   

For example, I'd wager Professor Burke would do a better job of connecting this early cordless analog number cruncher in my collection (Since I'll probably never get my own Babbage Difference Engine or Analytical Engine, let alone a replica Antikythera Mechanism, and my vintage abacus is buried in a box in the garage somewhere):



With this more recent cordless digital number cruncher:



Or even connect it as an ancestor to this boat anchor of a dual Pentium 4 Xeon IBM and the supporting devices:



Likewise, that precision time machine seen above the IBM on the kid's school desk is just one later iteration of John Harrison's H1 through H5 chronometers, including the H4 chronometer, which finally exhibited enough timekeeping accuracy to make possible usable latitude measurements by way of the aforementioned sextant.  (Another thing I'd like to have a replica of - the chronometers, that is.  I have a couple sextants, including an Air Force aircraft periscope version, and wish never to use the latter again...)

(Are we having fun yet?)

[wingnutx]

"Connections" is a fantastic show, as is Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed".

[InfidelSerf]

Ptsssst..  for those that love Connections and various other educational materials...
good source of knowledge
Just avoid the forum discussions, as most of the people there are canucks and eurotrash that hate the US but love conspiracy theories :p

[Strings]

I actually used a form of environmental determinism in an arguement with a racist once. His contention was that blacks were inferior, and the "proof" was the lack of civilization in sub-Saharan Africa at the time of colonial expansion. My counter was that civilization wasn't needed (at the time) to promote/perpetuate the species...

[natedog]

As old as people are. Humans have poor senses, little natural defenses or weapons, and are slow and weak (compared to other animals). Stripped completely naked, one could succumb to hypothermia in only 60* weather with a little bit of a wind chill (IIRC). Without something as basic as a house or clothes, most outside of the tropics would die of exposure pretty quickly.

 The only thing we have going for us are our brains, free forelimbs, and dextrious hands.

[Matthew Carberry]

As old as people are. Humans have poor senses, little natural defenses or weapons, and are slow and weak (compared to other animals). Stripped completely naked, one could succumb to hypothermia in only 60* weather with a little bit of a wind chill (IIRC). Without something as basic as a house or clothes, most outside of the tropics would die of exposure pretty quickly.

 The only thing we have going for us are our brains, free forelimbs, and dextrious hands.

Au contraire, you neglect my sparkling wit and impeccible fashion sense. 

[Perd Hapley]

Maybe none of us has noticed those, thus far.   

[Matthew Carberry]

Maybe none of us has noticed those, thus far.   

Ow

Hopefully you won't notice my tears...