04-01-2019, 12:04 PM
The world has changed greatly in its technologies, with economic and cultural consequences that few could predict. I think of the title of William Manchester's book A World Lit Only By Fire, about the Middle Ages, and recognize that the world as late as 1879 was lit only by fire. Trying to read or write by the light of a fireplace, candle, or even the oil lamp was unproductive. With Edison's incandescent light we could have daylight at night. Such could lengthen working hours -- for good and ill. But with this I get ahead of myself.
I think of the first mass society that Humanity ever known, the Roman Empire. It seems on the brink of modernity, yet it missed out. They could have had steam power which could have powered ships and created horseless travel. Would steamships and railroads fit Rome? They had wine presses, and all that it would have taken to start printing was movable type. (Paper would have been nice, but they had papyrus). A steam engine was introduced in Rome, but its inventor bragged that it would replace lots of slaves. A critic responded, "What will we do with all the slaves?" -- and that killed that potential innovation. Steam power and printing would have created the first modern society, and the Romans missed out. Figuring that Imperial Rome was a basket case by AD 300, it would take another millennium for the opportunities to arise anew.
Let us be clear: even with windmills, sailing ships far better than those of Antiquity, perspective in painting (which made possible analytic geometry and the calculus), water power, paper, steel, and printing, the world of George Washington was more like that of ancient Rome than like ours. Steam power, the Jacquard loom, the cotton gin, the assembly line, mechanical reapers, the telegraph, and electricity would make the world modern. That is before I discuss electric lights, motor vehicles, refrigeration, the telephone, and wireless transmission -- or aluminum, plastics, semiconductors, aircraft, transistors, and nuclear power.
Technology cannot defer one problem: the rise of elites with their ability to both expand and go decadent. Those who can force change through some brilliant innovation can reap huge profits honestly, but over time those elites become increasingly large in number (despite no need for their numerical expansion), more demanding, rapacious, and corrupt while they lose the characteristics that made them great. They become less innovative and less competent -- and unable to keep general conditions from going sour. Such characterizes all aristocracies, and even the bureaucratic elite of the Soviet Union and other 'socialist' states who did not own the means of production could take on characteristics of a bad aristocracy.
I think of the first mass society that Humanity ever known, the Roman Empire. It seems on the brink of modernity, yet it missed out. They could have had steam power which could have powered ships and created horseless travel. Would steamships and railroads fit Rome? They had wine presses, and all that it would have taken to start printing was movable type. (Paper would have been nice, but they had papyrus). A steam engine was introduced in Rome, but its inventor bragged that it would replace lots of slaves. A critic responded, "What will we do with all the slaves?" -- and that killed that potential innovation. Steam power and printing would have created the first modern society, and the Romans missed out. Figuring that Imperial Rome was a basket case by AD 300, it would take another millennium for the opportunities to arise anew.
Let us be clear: even with windmills, sailing ships far better than those of Antiquity, perspective in painting (which made possible analytic geometry and the calculus), water power, paper, steel, and printing, the world of George Washington was more like that of ancient Rome than like ours. Steam power, the Jacquard loom, the cotton gin, the assembly line, mechanical reapers, the telegraph, and electricity would make the world modern. That is before I discuss electric lights, motor vehicles, refrigeration, the telephone, and wireless transmission -- or aluminum, plastics, semiconductors, aircraft, transistors, and nuclear power.
Technology cannot defer one problem: the rise of elites with their ability to both expand and go decadent. Those who can force change through some brilliant innovation can reap huge profits honestly, but over time those elites become increasingly large in number (despite no need for their numerical expansion), more demanding, rapacious, and corrupt while they lose the characteristics that made them great. They become less innovative and less competent -- and unable to keep general conditions from going sour. Such characterizes all aristocracies, and even the bureaucratic elite of the Soviet Union and other 'socialist' states who did not own the means of production could take on characteristics of a bad aristocracy.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.