Re: Science is killing Science Fiction

: "W. Citoan" <wcitoan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
: There is a difference between a technology being a revolutionary
: change and an evolutionary technology that causes a revolutionary
: change in way we live. Those are two different aspects that (seem to
: me at least) to be intertwined in this thread.

Yes, that's a good point. But it's a bit hard to untwine them totally.
Most things we think of as revolutionary... oh, say, radio, are
refinements and combinations of things that were already being done.
I mean, how is morse code radio different than morse code telegraphy?
The need for stringing wires, right? But there were already wireless
signal technologies that had been in use for years; they were mostly
line-of-sight, but then we're reduced radio to "signaling around corners
a bit easier than before so you can get a message to a spot thousands
of miles away rapidly a bit cheaper than before", which doesn't really
seem all *that* revolutionary a technological change.

Similar things are true of automobiles and even airplanes. You really
have to draw a pretty arbitrary line to get a sharp boundary to the
"practical flying craft" business.

Was "man on the moon" a revolution? Hrm. Well, it was quite a distance
with lots of little increments from Goddard and Tsiolovsky to "the Eagle
has landed". That "giant leap" was actually quite a few hops, if you
look closely. And not only that, but the ensuing "social revolution"
fizzled, dinnit? Nothing like cars or telephones or electric power grids.

And speaking of electric power grids, was Edison's lightbulb
revolutionary? Well, there'd been several forms of electric lights
for some time before that (carbon arcs for one), and what started
changing things was incremental improvements and adaptations of scale,
and deployment.

So, examined closely enough, most technologies are evolutionary, and the
only revolution is in people's exposure to them, and the second order
fallout once they get to being used widely.

Hence, most anything *recent* is going to look *evolutionary*, just
because we saw it come out in drips over a period of time. Its only
when you are walking down the street wondering what's making all those
horses over there panic that the automobile looks like a "revolution"
in technology. Or when you compare things in steps of a decade or two.

Mind you, I don't deny the observation that we got trains, planes, and
automobiles (and lots of other stuff) by the 1950s, and "refinements"
since. There's something to it. But what's happened since isn't *all*
chopped liver. Is the cutover to electronic digital movie theater
projectors from celluloid projectors any less "revolutionary" than the
cutover from limelight to highpowered incandescent spotlights? Really?

Revolution and evolution are not as distinct as they might appear.
Some contexts tend to blur them together; which is which can depend
on how closely you look, or what sorts of things you are looking for.

He set down the stick, held out both his hands, first together,
then slowly widening the gap. "I think the the division is not
as clear as we think it is. Between what's alive, and what's not.
I think," and he watched as his own right hand marked off steps
toward his left, "that there are ... degrees between. More alive,
less alive... I don't think there's any one point where we can say,
`Here's where it begins.'" He considered his hands silently, then
dropped them to his knees. "I suppose that's true of a lot of things.
We mark off some point in the middle, and say `There's the division,'
when, really, there are dozens of steps between, or a hundred,
or a thousand..."

--- Willam to Rowan in "The Language of Power",
musing around a campfire



Wayne Throop throopw@xxxxxxxxx http://sheol.org/throopw
.

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