why did it take so long?

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fdd2blk

Well-Known Member
how long has man been on earth?

how long has man been "industrialized"?

why did it take so long to get here?

100, or so years ago we simply had steam engines. today we have the internet.

how come it took so long to get to steam engines but only a blink of the eye to step that up to high speed data transfer?


when and how did man suddenly become "smarter"?
 
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chitownsmoking

Guest
fdd2blk said:
how long has man been on earth?

how long has man been "industrialized"?

why did it take so long to get here?

100, or so years ago we simply had steam engines. today we have the internet.

how come it took so long to get to steam engines but only a blink of the eye to step that up to high speed data transfer?


when and how did man suddenly become "smarter"?
Click to expand...

lol from the alien technolidgies:bigjoint::bigjoint::bigjoint:
 
shnkrmn

shnkrmn

Well-Known Member
I agree. Rationalism and the enlightenment lit the fuse. The rocket continues to accelerate
 
shnkrmn

shnkrmn

Well-Known Member
Newton's physics sparked the industrial revolution, Einstein's physics sparked the thing that came after.
 
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fdd2blk

Well-Known Member
so it took newton being born? what if he wasn't, or if there had been a tragic accident?





so far, the alien theory holds the most water. for me.



it happened so suddenly and is progressing at an even faster rate day by day. our knowledge feeds on itself.

will it take over?

:neutral:
 
herbose

herbose

Well-Known Member
fdd2blk said:
so it took newton being born? what if he wasn't, or if there had been a tragic accident?





so far, the alien theory holds the most water. for me.



it happened so suddenly and is progressing at an even faster rate day by day. our knowledge feeds on itself.

will it take over?

:neutral:[/QUOTE

Newton didn't invent rationalism, think Rennaisance, Galileo, etc. Took a while to catch on and Newton gave it a powerful kick in the butt to get it moving.
Will it take over?....already has for the most part.
Click to expand...
 
morgentaler

morgentaler

Well-Known Member
"I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." Stephen Jay Gould, 1980

The minds have always been there. But it took a culmination of things: The scientific method, the Gutenberg press, the assembly line, and the widespread availability of education. With literacy anyone had the capability to assimilate information with a rapidity previously unknown.

We went from steam engines to handheld supercomputers in such a short time because information density allows us to learn and access that information with greater speed all the time.

If you think it's moving fast now, the world in 20 years alone would blow you away if you weren't watching it adapt.
 
Mr.KushMan

Mr.KushMan

Well-Known Member
I read on a fact sheet somewhere, there will be more information created in the next year then there has been since the beginning of man. Things get more complex and are very difficult to put back the way they were, which is how the biosphere evolves with a very similar kind of explosion.

Peace
 
doc111

doc111

Well-Known Member
We can't discount the role freedom and democracy have played in allowing science to flourish with such rapidity. Is it an accident that the industrial revolution began shortly after the birth of the U.S.? I honestly couldn't say but I think many of the previous points hold much validity (even the alien one). It seems that there were a lot of events which transpired around the same time which caused the explosion in technology (including the crash at Roswell).;-)
 
PlantManBee

PlantManBee

Well-Known Member
morgentaler said:
"I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." Stephen Jay Gould, 1980

The minds have always been there. But it took a culmination of things: The scientific method, the Gutenberg press, the assembly line, and the widespread availability of education. With literacy anyone had the capability to assimilate information with a rapidity previously unknown.

We went from steam engines to handheld supercomputers in such a short time because information density allows us to learn and access that information with greater speed all the time.

If you think it's moving fast now, the world in 20 years alone would blow you away if you weren't watching it adapt.
Click to expand...
i agree with everything you say here. :bigjoint: as for peeps getting smarter every year...not a chance IMHO. where do those stats come from and who do they apply to?
 
Katatawnic

Katatawnic

Well-Known Member
PlantManBee said:
i agree with everything you say here. :bigjoint: as for peeps getting smarter every year...not a chance IMHO. where do those stats come from and who do they apply to?
Click to expand...
Look up "Flynn Effect" on your favorite search engine. I haven't read it yet, just found it myself. :lol:
 
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PadawanBater

Guest
fdd2blk said:
how long has man been on earth?
Click to expand...
100-300 thousand years

how long has man been "industrialized"?
Click to expand...

Depends on your definition of "industrialized" - I'd say the beginning of agriculture is the milestone where human growth really took off. That happened 10-13 thousand years ago in 3 known, independent locations - The Fertile Crescent, near Israel, Jordan and Iraq, then in China, then in Mesoamerica.

There's also 7 different locations that may have developed agriculture and plant domestication;



why did it take so long to get here?
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Because walking takes a very very very long time! The rate was less than 3 miles per year since the arrival of homosapiens out of Africa! Do the math, how many miles is it from Ethiopia to the southern tip of South America going through the Bearing Straight?

100, or so years ago we simply had steam engines. today we have the internet.
Click to expand...
Exponential growth. It doubles every year. If you play video games you notice that kind of stuff a lot, the graphics coming out today are unbelievable compared to 10 years ago!

how come it took so long to get to steam engines but only a blink of the eye to step that up to high speed data transfer?
Click to expand...

Because technology builds upon itself, the previous generation isn't as smart as this generation, and this generation won't be as smart as the next one because all the future generations that come have the benefit of using all the knowledge we had available to us, PLUS the stuff they all come up with that surpasses the technology we posses today. Also you should consider the variable of population increases. More humans means more ideas.

when and how did man suddenly become "smarter"?
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First step was definitely when we switched to eating meat. That drove our increase in intelligence capacity, then when we started domesticating animals and farming, that made it possible for people to live in big groups, villages, towns and cities. Though there's debate if living together first led to agriculture, sort of a chicken/egg type thing. That led to all the benefits modern society offers. So I think there's a few different milestones to our evolution as a species and how we got to where we are today.

That screenshot came from a book called Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It's a great insight into that stuff, how we got started, I'd recommend it.
 
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