Technology – Page 28 – artdiamondblog.com

Cooking Allowed the Toothless to Live

Source of book image: http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344733081l/13587130.jpg

(p. C12) . . . the narrative, ragtag though it may be, is a good one and it starts with the single greatest achievement in cookware–the cooking pot. Originally made of clay, this simple invention allowed previously inedible foods to be cooked in water, a process that removed toxins, made them digestible and reduced the need for serious chewing, a deadly problem for the toothless. (Archaeologists find adult skeletons without teeth only at sites dating from after the invention of the cooking pot.)
. . .
When “Consider the Fork” turns to cultural history, Ms. Wilson’s points sometimes contradict one another. On one hand, she slyly condemns the rich throughout history and their use of cheap cooking labor. Yet she also relates how the Lebanese writer Anissa Helou remembers kibbé being made in Beirut by her mother and grandmother: They pounded the lamb in a mortar and pestle for an hour, a process described in loving terms. So is cooking labor a bedrock of family values or class exploitation?

For the full review, see:
CHRISTOPHER KIMBALL. “The World on a Plate.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., October 6, 2012): C12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date October 5, 2012.)

The book under review, is:
Wilson, Bee. Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat. New York: Basic Books, 2012.

New Technology Gets Better, Cheaper and More Diverse

(p. 75) Devices not only get better, they also get cheaper while they get better. We turn around to peer through our window into the past and realize there wasn’t window glass back then. The past also lacked machine-woven cloth, refrigerators, steel, photographs, and the entire warehouse of goods spilling into the aisles of our local superstore. We can trace this cornucopia back along a diminishing curve to the Neolithic era. Craft from ancient times can surprise us in its sophistication, but in sheer quantity, variety, and complexity, it pales against modern inventions. The proof of this is clear: We buy the new over the old. Given the choice between an old-fashioned tool and a new one, most people–in the past as well as now–would grab the newer one. A very few will collect old tools, but as big as eBay is, and flea markets anywhere in the world, they are dwarfed by the market of the new. But if the new is not really better, and we keep reaching for it, then we are consistently duped or consistently dumb. The more likely reason we seek the new is that new things do get better. And of course there are more new things to choose from.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.

Were Phone Phreaks Creative Incipient Entrepreneurs or Destructive “Sophomoric Savants”?

Source of book image: http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/9780802120618_p0_v2_s260x420.JPG

(p. C6) Mr. Lapsley also describes John Draper, aka Captain Crunch, who was probably the most celebrated of the phreakers; his nickname derived from the fact that whistles that used to come in Cap’n Crunch cereal boxes happened to generate the key 2600-Hz tone used in long-distance switching. . . .

The phone-phreak netherworld was introduced to a mass audience by the October 1971 issue of Esquire magazine, which included what has to be (at least indirectly) one of the most influential articles ever written: Ron Rosenbaum’s “Secrets of the Little Blue Box.” Not only did it turn phreakers into folk heroes, but it inspired two young men, Steve Wozniak (who provided the foreword for this book) and Steve Jobs, to construct and sell blue boxes. Going door to door in Berkeley dorms, they managed to sell several dozen at $170 each. The “two Steves” savored this mix of clever engineering and entrepreneurial hustle: As Mr. Lapsley quotes Jobs saying: “If we hadn’t made blue boxes, there would have been no Apple.” (Mr. Rosenbaum’s article also put the “phreak” into “phone phreak.”)
. . .: By the 1980s, computerized phone systems and fiber-optic cables rendered many of the old phreaking modes obsolete. In addition, I can’t help suspecting that the breakup of AT&T in 1984–the result of an antitrust lawsuit filed by the federal government–deeply discouraged the hard-core phreaks. Surreptitiously penetrating one of the shriveled new regional phone companies must have seemed a paltry caper compared with taking on mighty, majestic AT&T.
. . .
I must, however, take issue with one of Mr. Lapsley’s conclusions. In reflecting on the phreaks’ legacy, he writes: “The phone phreaks taught us that there is a societal benefit to tolerating, perhaps even nurturing (in the words of Apple) the crazy ones–the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers.” Is that truly what they taught us? . . .
Wilt Chamberlain supposedly once said that “nobody roots for Goliath.” Perhaps. But the lesson to be learned from those waging guerrilla war against giants like the phone company and the Internet is that sophomoric savants who tamper with society’s indispensable systems ultimately harm all too many innocent people.

For the full review, see:
HOWARD SCHNEIDER. “BOOKSHELF; Playing Tricks on Ma Bell.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., February 2, 2013): C6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date February 1, 2013.)

The book under review, is:
Lapsley, Phil. Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell. New York: Grove Press, 2013.

Knowledge Economy Migrating to Intangible Goods and Services

(p. 67) Our present economic migration from a material-based industry to a knowledge economy of intangible goods (such as software, design, and media products) is just the latest in a steady move toward the immaterial. (Not that material processing has let up, just that intangible processing is now more economically valuable.) Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, says, “Data from nearly all parts of the world show us that consumers tend to spend relatively less on goods and more on services as their incomes rise. . . . Once people have met their basic needs, they tend to want medical care, transportation and communication, information, recreation, entertainment, financial and legal advice, and the like.” The disembodiment of value (more value, less mass) is a steady trend in the technium. In six years the average weight per dollar of U.S. exports (the most valuable things the U.S. produces) (p. 68) dropped by half. Today, 40 percent of U.S. exports are services (intangibles) rather than manufactured goods (atoms). We are steadily substituting intangible design, flexibility, innovation, and smartness for rigid, heavy atoms. In a very real sense our entry into a service- and idea-based economy is a continuation of a trend that began at the big bang.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.
(Note: ellipsis in original; a graph is omitted that appears in the middle of the paragraph quoted above.)

You Can Buy a New Flint Knife or Stone Ax

(p. 55) Let’s take the oldest technology of all: a flint knife or stone ax. Well, it turns out you can buy a brand-new flint knife, flaked by hand and carefully attached to an antler-horn handle by tightly wound leather straps. In every respect it is precisely the same technology as a flint knife made 30,000 years ago. It’s yours for fifty dollars, available from more than one website. In the highlands of New Guinea, tribesmen were making stone axes for their own use until the 1960s. They still make stone axes the same way for tourists now. And stone-ax aficionados study them. There is an unbroken chain of knowledge that has kept this Stone Age technology alive. Today, in the United States alone, there are 5,000 amateurs who knap fresh arrowhead points by hand. They meet on weekends, exchange tips in flint-knapping clubs, and sell their points to souvenir brokers. John Whittaker, a professional archaeologist and flint knapper himself, has studied these amateurs and estimates that they produce over one million brand-new spear and arrow points per year. These new points are indistinguishable, even to experts like Whittaker, from authentic ancient ones.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.

Currently Possible Inventions Are Not Inevitable; Someone Must Think of Them and Make Them Happen

(p. C4) . . . some inventions seem to have occurred to nobody until very late. The wheeled suitcase is arguably such a, well, case. Bernard Sadow applied for a patent on wheeled baggage in 1970, after a Eureka moment when he was lugging his heavy bags through an airport while a local worker effortlessly pushed a large cart past. You might conclude that Mr. Sadow was decades late. There was little to stop his father or grandfather from putting wheels on bags.
Mr. Sadow’s bags ran on four wheels, dragged on a lead like a dog. Seventeen years later a Northwest Airlines pilot, Robert Plath, invented the idea of two wheels on a suitcase held vertically, plus a telescopic handle to pull it with. This “Rollaboard,” now ubiquitous, also feels as if it could have been invented much earlier.
Or take the can opener, invented in the 1850s, eight decades after the can. Early 19th-century soldiers and explorers had to make do with stabbing bayonets into food cans. “Why doesn’t somebody come up with a wheeled cutter?” they must have muttered (or not) as they wrenched open the cans.

For the full commentary, see:
MATT RIDLEY. “MIND & MATTER; Don’t Look for Inventions Before Their Time.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., September 15, 2012): C4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date September 14, 2012.)

Steam-Powered Cars Show that Old Technologies Rarely Totally Disappear

(p. 53) In my own travels around the world I was struck by how resilient ancient technologies were, how they were often first choices where power and modern resources were scarce. It seemed to me as if no technologies ever disappeared. I was challenged on this conclusion by a highly regarded historian of technology who told me without thinking, “Look, they don’t make steam-powered automobiles anymore.” Well, within a few clicks on Google I very quickly located folks who are making brand-new parts for Stanley steam-powered cars. Nice shiny copper valves, pistons, whatever you need. With enough money you could put together an entirely new steam-powered car. And of course, thousand of hobbyists are still bolting together steam-powered vehicles, and hundreds more are keeping old ones running. Steam power is very much an intact, though uncommon, species of technology.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.
(Note: italics in original.)

Increased CO2 “Kept a New Ice Age at Bay”

(p. 38) . . . the repeated inventions and spread of agriculture around the planet affected not only the surface of the Earth, but its 100-kilometer-wide (60-mile-wide) atmosphere as well. Farming disturbed the soil and increased CO2. Some climatologists believe that this early anthropogenic warming, starting 8,000 years ago, kept a new ice age at bay. Widespread adoption of farming disrupted a natural climate cycle that ordinarily would have refrozen the northernmost portions of the planet by now.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Longer Life Spans “Allowed More Time to Invent New Tools”

(p. 33) The primary long-term consequence of . . . slightly better nutrition was a steady increase in longevity. Anthropologist Rachel Caspari studied the dental fossils of 768 hominin individuals in Europe, Asia, and Africa, dated from 5 million years ago until the great leap. She determined that a “dramatic increase in longevity in the modern humans” began about 50,000 years ago. Increasing longevity allowed grandparenting, creating what is called the grandmother effect: In a virtuous circle, via the communication of grandparents, ever more powerful innovations carried forward were able to lengthen life spans further, which allowed more time to invent new tools, which increased population. Not only that: Increased longevity “provide[d] a selective advantage promoting further population increase,” because a higher density of humans increased the rate and influence of innovations, which contributed to increased populations. Caspari claims that the most fundamental biological factor that underlies the behavioral innovations of modernity maybe the increase in adult survivorship. It is no coincidence that increased longevity is the most measurable consequence of the acquisition of technology. It is also the most consequential.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.
(Note: ellipsis added; bracketed “d” in Kelly’s original.)

In Later Middle Ages Machines Replaced Slaves and Coolies

(p. 7) By the European Middle Ages, craftiness manifested itself most significantly in a new use of energy. An efficient horse collar had disseminated throughout society, drastically increasing farm acreage, while water mills and windmills were improved, increasing the flow of lumber and flour and improving drainage. And all this plentitude came without slavery. As Lynn White, historian of technology, wrote, “The chief glory (p. 8) of the later Middle Ages was not its cathedrals or its epics or its scholasticism: it was the building for the first time in history of a complex civilization which rested not on the backs of sweating slaves or coolies but primarily on non-human power.” Machines were becoming our coolies.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.

Kevin Kelly Explains and Criticizes Amish Attitude toward Technology

Source of book image: http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/files/2012/02/kevin-kelly-book_rdax_620x349-300×285.jpg

Kevin Kelly’s book has received a lot of attention, sometimes in conjunction with Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From, with which it shares some themes. I found the Kelly book valuable, but frustrating.
The valuable part includes the discussion of the benefits of technology, and the chapter detailing Amish attitudes and practices related to technology. On the latter, for instance, I learned that the Amish do not categorically reject new technology, but believe that it should be adopted more slowly, after long community deliberation.
What frustrated me most about the book is that it argues that technology has a life of its own and that technological progress is predetermined and inevitable. (I believe that technological progress depends on enlightened government policies and active entrepreneurial initiative, neither of which is inevitable.)
In the next several weeks, I will be quoting some of the more important or thought-provoking passages in the book.

The reference for Kelly’s book, is:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.

The Johnson book mentioned above, is:
Johnson, Steven. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. New York: Riverhead Books, 2010.