Profit motivates invention? Not necessarily. By way of a simple example, what motivated the invention of Post-its was the inventor's desire for a better way to mark pages in his hymnbook than with scraps of paper. It was only after he had solved the problem he perceived that he began to consider his invention's possibilities as a product.
What drives invention is usually dissatisfaction with the status quo, not greed.
For those who aren't too full of Ayn Rand-style capitalism-worship mindfuck, Henry Petroski's book The Evolution of Useful Things is a great way to find out more about what motivates engineers and inventors. In fact, I highly recommend anything by Petroski for anyone interested in learning about the social context of engineering from someone who actually practices it, instead of ideological bullshit from those who don't.
Sophisticated? A pyramid is basically a pile of stones. You don't need sophisticated analyses to build one, you just need a good quarry, a large workforce and a lot of patience.
The fact that the pyramids were oriented pretty accurately to true north is impressive, but you don't need any particularly sophisticated computing techniques to do that either. All you need is the ability to build a wall that's level and a segment of a circle, and to find the center of the circle. Then, you need a plumb bob, some string and patience...
Even the cathedrals of the 11th & 12th centuries were designed and built without mathematics more sophisticated than what you learn in a 9th-grade geometry course.
Just because our culture can't conceive of engineering without dressing it in ten tons of academic drag doesn't mean that the builders of ancient times had to do things our way.
The content producers aren't responsible for advocating or encouraging terrorist violence?
Funny, but there's a precedent that says otherwise, and it was set, ironically, at Nuremberg.
Anybody remember ol' Julius Streicher?
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Profit motivates invention? Not necessarily. By way of a simple example, what motivated the invention of Post-its was the inventor's desire for a better way to mark pages in his hymnbook than with scraps of paper. It was only after he had solved the problem he perceived that he began to consider his invention's possibilities as a product. What drives invention is usually dissatisfaction with the status quo, not greed. For those who aren't too full of Ayn Rand-style capitalism-worship mindfuck, Henry Petroski's book The Evolution of Useful Things is a great way to find out more about what motivates engineers and inventors. In fact, I highly recommend anything by Petroski for anyone interested in learning about the social context of engineering from someone who actually practices it, instead of ideological bullshit from those who don't.
Sophisticated? A pyramid is basically a pile of stones. You don't need sophisticated analyses to build one, you just need a good quarry, a large workforce and a lot of patience. The fact that the pyramids were oriented pretty accurately to true north is impressive, but you don't need any particularly sophisticated computing techniques to do that either. All you need is the ability to build a wall that's level and a segment of a circle, and to find the center of the circle. Then, you need a plumb bob, some string and patience... Even the cathedrals of the 11th & 12th centuries were designed and built without mathematics more sophisticated than what you learn in a 9th-grade geometry course. Just because our culture can't conceive of engineering without dressing it in ten tons of academic drag doesn't mean that the builders of ancient times had to do things our way.
The content producers aren't responsible for advocating or encouraging terrorist violence? Funny, but there's a precedent that says otherwise, and it was set, ironically, at Nuremberg. Anybody remember ol' Julius Streicher?