10 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Being Against Technological Progress if Futile
Ron complaining that antibiotics put too many grave diggers out of work. The transfer of labor from humans to our inventions is nothing less than the history of civilization. It is inseparable from centuries of rising living standards and improvements in human rights. What a luxury to sit in a climate-controlled room with access to the sum of hu¬ man knowledge on a device in your pocket and lament how we don't work with our hands anymore! There are still plenty of places in the world where p...Folksonomies: automation
Folksonomies: automation
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notes
notes20 NOV 2018 by ideonexus
The Economic and Cultural Divide in America
For most of the last century, wages in poorer parts of America rose faster than wages in richer places, as inventions were put to work in the hinterlands. After Henry Ford invented the Model T, for example, workers on assembly lines all over the Midwest built it.
Now it’s just the opposite. Bright young people from all over America, typically with college degrees, are streaming into the talent hubs of America—where the sum of their capacities is far greater than they’d be separately.
... 1 notes
notes21 APR 2017 by ideonexus
How Our Grandparents Perceive the World as Unchanging
Men can know a thing and yet know it quite ineffectively if it contradicts the general traditions and habits in which they live.
[...]
ONE of the most striking differences between the outlook of our grandparents and that of a modern intelligence today is the modification of time values that has occurred.
By the measure of our knowledge their time-scale was extremely shallow. They had scarcely any historical perspective at all. They looked back to a past of a few thousand years and at the v... 1 notes
notes12 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Spelling is an Invention, and May be Modified
Spelling was invented by man and, like other human
inventions, is capable of development and improve-
ment by man in the direction of simplicity, economy,
and efficiency. Its true function is to represent as
accurately as possible by means of simbols (letters)
the sounds of the spoken (i. e. the living) language,
and thus incidentally to record its history. Its prov-
ince is not, as is often mistakenly supposed, to indicate
the derivations of words from sources that ar in-
accessible...
1 Note the intentional use of simplified spelling in the text.
24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Pure Understanding of Nature is the Primary Aim of Science
Pupin believed with passionate intensity that the primary aim of science is the pure understanding of nature, and that useful applications must be considered of secondary importance. The prestige and influence which he derived from his inventions he used in an unceasing campaign to improve the standing of fundamental science in America. In this way the paradoxical situation arose, that it was Pupin the practical inventor who did more than any other man of his time to convince the American pub... 1 notes
notesFrom the preface.
04 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Ideas Power the American Economy
Ideas are what power our economy. It’s what sets us apart. It’s what America has been all about. We have been a nation of dreamers and risk-takers; people who see what nobody else sees sooner than anybody else sees it. We do innovation better than anybody else — and that makes our economy stronger. When we invest in the best ideas before anybody else does, our businesses and our workers can make the best products and deliver the best services before anybody else.
And because of th... 1 notes
notesThe Human Genome Project returned $140 for every $1 spent.
18 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Chinese Cultural Innovations Turned to Ritual
When Europeans first arrived in China, three hundred years a^ago, they found that almost all the arts had reached a certain degree of perfection there, and they were surprised that a people which had attained this point should not have gone beyond it. At a later period they discovered traces of some higher branches of science that h had been lost. The nation was absorbed in productive industry; the greater part of its scientific processes had been preserved, but science itself no longer exist...
1 An account of the amazing art and inventions found in China, but how these had turned into unquestioned rituals--performed exactly over and over again through the ages without alteration or innovation. The culture had stagnated.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Man is Distinguished from Other Animals by his Imagination
Among the multitude of animals which scamper, fly, burrow and swim around us, man is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment, but to change it. And that series of inventions, by which man from age to age has remade his environment, is a different kind of evolution—not biological, but cultural evolution. I call that brilliant sequence of cultural peaks The As...Man evolves culturally.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Take Hope in the Complexity of Nature
Meantime, let no man be alarmed at the multitude of particulars, but let this rather encourage him to hope. For the particular phenomena of art and nature are but a handful to the inventions of the wit, when disjoined and separated from the evidence of things. Moreover, this road has an issue in the open ground and not far off; the other has no issue at all, but endless entanglement. For men hitherto have made but short stay with experience, but passing her lightly by, have wasted an infinity... 1 notes
notesWhile humans have wasted time on meditations and exercises of wit, there is an endless world of experience awaiting them.
01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus
Thomas Jefferson on Sharing Ideas
Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made...An excellent argument for fair use and limits on copyright.
