All Aboard The Technological Revolution

fm6 writes "Our old friends at nytimes.com (click here to tell them how much traffic their silly registration system costs them) have a short but thought-provoking interview with economic historian John Gordon Steele. He compares the economic effect of the Internet to various other technological revolutions, especially the introduction of steam power in the early 19th century."

Comments

Re:Hmm - comparison

[Jack William Bell]

You Said:
>If anything, the Industrial revolution made
>people poorer. A few people got really rich,
>but the shift to a urban v. Rural lifestyle
>ruined the lives of generationsof people.

Clearly you have had your history fed to you by spoon, or else by a Marxist. In actual fact the shift to the urban lifestyle broke the back of old aristocracy by giving people a freedom of choice they didn't have before. No longer must there choices consist of working a farm owned by a landlord or starve...

Read some books about the lifestyle of the average person in the middle ages and then compare that to the wage slaves of the Industrial Revoloution. Were they better off? You bet. Were they still exploited, treated like cattle and forced into lives of desperation. Damn right.

The point is that there was an incremental *increase* in the quality of living for the new urban working class. And the ensuing increase in literacy and the narrowing of class boundaries led to the reforms that truly made the working(man)'s life better and gave hope and upward mobility to (his) children.

The industrial revoloution was a *good thing* (tm). Don't let anyone tell you different. The fact that it also came with its own set of *bad things* (tm) is just the way things work. The pendulumn swings and over time things balance out.

Please don't post regurtitated historical pablum in the future. Do some reading and think for yourself!

Jack

Re:Complain anyway

[jonbrewer]

What's your problem with the NYTimes registration system? I registered back in 1996 and have never had any problems nor received any junk mail from them. It hasn't cost me a cent, nor given away any more information about myself than "person with cookie n has these browsing/reading habits."

They're a private company, providing a service, and earning their keep through advertising, which benefits from registration and tracking.

If registration and tracking of users and what articles they read helps them a. target appropriate banner ads to browsers and/or b. publish more successful content, they're certainly not going to get rid of registration, no matter how much you complain.

(note: at the 2001 MIT Image and Meaning conference, I think the Times Science editor said they didn't select topics and articles based on readership statistics gathered from the web, but I highly doubt they're not influenced in some way by how successful certain topics are.)

The steam engine era

[Animats]

The steam engine era really began a huge change in history. There hadn't been much technological progress in the previous 1000 years. GNP increased a few percent per century prior to the industrial revolution. The major developments of the 1000 years preceding the steam engine were the horse-collar, some tricks for making steel in small quantities, stirrups, mechanical clocks, and some improvements in plows. That's about it.

It took about a century, from 1600 to about 1700, to develop the components needed for a steam engine. Steam powered water pumps (no piston, just valves) were developed, and were useful enough to get a very modest boiler industry going.

Newcomen, in 1705, had the first useful steam engine, although it wasn't very good. Newcomen had it backwards; he let the steam into the cylinder at maximum displacement, then injected water to condense the steam within the cylinder, allowing atmospheric pressure to move the piston in compression. It took until 1768 before Watt fixed this and got it right.

Suddenly things speeded up. By 1781, Watt had all the components of the modern steam engine - valve gear, governor, flywheel, indicating devices, and double-acting piston. 1782 brought the steam hammer, the first power tool. This was a major step - steam engines providing the power to make more steam engines. 1784 brought the first model locomotive, although it was 1804 before the first full-sized one, and 1825 until one that was commercially useful.

Then things really speeded up. 30 MPH in 1829. Railroads went everywhere in the next 30 years. So did industry. The rest, of course, is history.

Now that was a technological singularity. The Internet looks minor compared to steam.