[FRIAM] invention and context

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Great essay:

The Future-Altering Technologies We Forgot to Invent
https://medium.com/the-polymath-project/gene-wolfe-a-science-fiction-legend-on-the-future-altering-technologies-we-forgot-to-invent-a3103572a352

Wolfe's been one of my favorite authors since I read his Book of the New Sun series back in high school.  But the interesting part of this essay and reference to Wolfe's and Taleb's ideas that (some) inventions could have occurred other than when they did ... the interesting part lies in the context of any given invention.  E.g. wheels on a suitcase: if most of the surfaces over which one carries suitcases (like dirt roads, into and out of trains, or whatever) aren't navigable by those compact, hard wheels we associate with rolling luggage, it's not so "obvious" that adding wheels to luggage is useful or interesting.  Hell, at *least* half the time I use my carry on luggage, I'm carrying it, not rolling it.  And those wheels definitely get in the way (like when I got a pebble stuck in one wheel walking along a road in Paris so that I rubbed a big secant out of it, causing it to make a seriously irritating thump-thump-thump when I finally arrived at a place where rolling it made sense).

I used to call this sort of thinking (that some concept or invention was "so obvious") "temporal arrogance" ... the idea that the/your/one's current time period somehow makes more sense than other time periods.  But I came to dislike that phrase, not merely because it doesn't address "spatial arrogance", but because it just doesn't go far enough.  It doesn't slather on enough disdain for people who refuse to put themselves in others' shoes.  It's a kind of "perspectival negligence" or something ... almost criminal.  Perhaps the inadequacy of the phrase became obvious after thinking seriously about computational side-effects, "unintended consequences", or "externalities".  I don't know.

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☣ uǝlƃ