How Far Back?

August 31, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: History, Quotes, Steampunk, Technology

On the appeal of steampunk:

“Compared with an earlier and more thoroughly handcrafted era, a return to the late 1800s or early 1900s does not mean having to give up all the most basic modern conveniences. Most of these, including indoor plumbing, electric lighting and even air conditioning, had been invented and put into use by this time—in the main by the privileged, but then it is their lives (and not those of common men and women) that are the stuff of historical fantasy. Travel no longer meant riding in cramped stagecoaches over dirt roads or wind-and wave-tossed sailing vessels, but in luxurious automobiles
and handsomely appointed cabins aboard trains and steamships.”

Via Clockworker.

Antivirus Software Sucks

July 4, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Computers, Quotes, Software

And:

“It’s not just AV software. The entire software industry operates this way.

1. Shovel feature-rich bug-ware onto unsuspecting schlubs to build “brand”
(especially in the enterprise/IT market where the person purchasing the
software is often not the person who has to use it, so they make
decisions based on feature list and brand name rather than quality)
2. Wait for hobbyists, researchers, or smaller companies to figure out how to do it right
3. Buy their companies
4. Repeat”

Quoted from the discussion at Slashdot.

The immutable verities of grand physical laws

April 17, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Instruments, Obsolete technology, Quotes

Galvanometer

“The design and manufacture of scientific instruments has undergone a radical transformation in the last 30 years, achieving what might be described as the democratization of accuracy. Levers, pinions, wheels, and linkages have given way to microprocessors that read data at exquisite levels of sensitivity and reveal it instantly on digital displays. This transformation has affected our lives far beyond the laboratory, but to my eye the gains have been accompanied by losses.”

Read: The engineer’s art, why a contemporary-art expert also collects old machines.
Picture: Einthoven’s string galvanometer.

Temporocentrism

April 12, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Quotes

“A popular misconception exists that the builders of the pyramids or the cave painters of prehistory were somehow less intelligent than we are. This simply isn’t true – there is no evidence that the human brain has evolved at all in the last fifty thousand years at least. Modern people are merely benefiting from thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and experimentation, not from increased intellect. (…). This idea is part of a mistaken view of history best described as temporocentrism – the belief that our own time is the most important and represents a “pinnacle” of achievement. The temporocentric view is a hangover from nineteenth-century ideas of progress. (…). It is a kind of racism, in which our ancestors are looked down on simply because they lived in the past.”

Quoted from: Ancient Inventions, Peter James and Nick Thorpe (Amazon link).

Technofix

April 7, 2009 by kris de decker Filed Under: Quotes, Technofix

“Why has energy conservation through lifestyle change – arguably the single easiest and most cost effective option we have on hand in dealing with the end of the age of cheap oil – been entirely off the political and cultural radar screens since the end of the 1970s, so much so that most of those who have noticed that we’re running out of cheap abundant energy have framed the issue entirely in terms of finding some technical gimmick that will let us keep on living the way we live now?” Read.