
Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we often hate new stuff - walterbell
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/07/21/humans-once-opposed-coffee-and-refrigeration-heres-why-we-often-hate-new-stuff/
======
btilly
This was all said very, very well by Machiavelli hundreds of years ago in
chapter 6 of _The Prince_.

 _And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take
in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to
take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the
innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old
conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.
This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on
their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe
in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens
that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it
like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the
prince is endangered along with them._

~~~
smallnamespace
> Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the
> old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the
> new

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion_\(psychology\))

There's a good reason for this: If you gamble on something that can hurt your
livelihood, then if you win you only get marginally richer, but if you lose
you might not be able to feed yourself or your family.

Or to put it in a cruder way, reproductive success has strongly decreasing
return to scale as a function of economic success. Bill Gates has only 3
children, even though his income is around ~300,000x that of the average
American.

~~~
hammock
Hes not saying that there's not good reason for it...

It's a fact of life that you have to play to win. The richest in history took
extraordinary risks to get there, and for every winning risktaker there were
10 losing risktakers.

This also goes hand in hand with why hard work and perseverance are virtues.

~~~
tw04
> The richest in history took extraordinary risks to get there

Not exactly accurate. Bill Gates may have dropped out of college to pursue
Microsoft, but that was hardly an extraordinary risk. His parents were
extremely well off, and had that adventure been a failure, he simply would've
gone back to school and completed his degree. Same thing with Zuckerberg.

~~~
akiselev
Without 20/20 hindsight it was absolutely a huge risk. What if Microsoft had
failed after five or ten years? He would have lost all of the time he could
have spent earning a college degree and developing/working his network. Given
that his parents were well off and he went to Harvard of all places, that is
an insane opportunity risk to the vast majority of people if they didn't know
that their efforts would become one of the most valuable companies in the
world.

~~~
tw04
Given that he had a multi-million dollar trust-fund, I would imagine he either
would've spent his days living off that and doing whatever work interested him
most, or just continued on with his career at a roughly 5-year deficit to that
of his peers. With a Harvard degree I'm quite confident he would've managed to
get by.

~~~
akiselev
Except, you know, he wouldn't have a Harvard degree if he dropped out, he'd
have no career, he'd be bleeding money out of his trust fund, he wouldn't
continue developing the very valuable network or pedigree during his remaining
years at Harvard, and he'd be stuck with knowledge that wasn't as valuable
then as it is now. That's how opportunity costs work.

We're not talking about whether he'd "get by," that's irrelevant. We're
talking about _relative_ risks assuming that Microsoft didn't succeed.

~~~
Zafira
People want to believe that there's some sacrifice...some payment made for
people like Bill Gates to have earned their wealth.

I think Bill Gates is a great businessman and he has worked for his wealth,
but let us not be delusional. The son of a well-respected Seattle lawyer from
a long-standing Seattle family that could afford to send their kid to the most
prestigious school in Seattle was never going to have issues having a
comfortable career by going with "Plan B".

~~~
akiselev
_An opportunity cost is literally a sacrifice by definition._ Bill Gates made
a choice to start Microsoft instead of finishing school so there was clearly
one opportunity that he rejected and one that he followed. It's not "payment,"
it's a fact that he chose one path and due to the universal law of causality
had to give up one opportunity for another. If Microsoft hadn't succeeded he
would have been left empty handed. That's the very definition of risk.

The only delusion in this thread is the idea that Bill Gates took no risk when
he decided to drop out of _Harvard_ and start a company with the goal of
ushering in the age of personal computing. I'm not comparing him to a starving
African child, I'm just pointing out that he took a risk just like every
entrepreneur on the planet.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
When people say "he's rich, it wasn't a risk for him" they're really saying
that the person wasn't risking their well-being. They're not saying that
person didn't risk something else, such as employability; but employability is
unimportant to someone in that position whilst for another person it's vital.

So yes, technically you're right, but your argument is missing the vital
essence of what people mean when they say, eg, "Bill Gates wasnt taking a
risk".

------
crusso
_In hindsight, opposition to innovations such as mechanical farm equipment or
recorded music may seem ludicrous._

How about if the article talked about the problems with the people who rapidly
embraced once "nifty and new" ideas like taking x-rays of feet at shoe stores,
using Fen-Phen for weight loss, getting on airplanes in the early days of
flying, etc.?

What the article ignores completely is the notion of idea survival bias. The
article goes through pains to cast reluctance to adopt new ideas as being a
defective mode of thinking by not talking about the risk model for the
adoption of new ideas.

~~~
manachar
That would be helpful. It's not always easy to know which innovation is
actually a net benefit.

Leaded gasoline was a superior fuel in many respects but was clearly a
fraudulent mistake (it was sold with false assurances of safety).

Even the original Luddites were not wrong in their original critiques - the
technological innovations of machined industrialization did indeed replace
workers and enrich employers. (That such technological innovation also created
wealth was poor consolation for the workers getting the short end of the
stick).

Chemical warfare was horrible enough to have military strategists more than
willing to agree to ban its usage.

New is not universally a good. In fact, every change has benefits and
detriments that will be unequally distributed. History has also shown a
tendency for the detriments to be mostly felt by the poor and disenfranchised.

It seems fair to be cautious about the new.

~~~
hueving
>That such technological innovation also created wealth was poor consolation
for the workers getting the short end of the stick

That falls flat when you consider that lower middle class people have access
to much greater things than upper middle class people and rich people did 50
years ago.

~~~
manachar
It doesn't fall flat, it just (potentially) shows a net benefit for most.
You've also narrowed the debate to a purely materialistic benefit (.i.e. more
things cheaper) while taking a broader view of the whole class of people at a
time.

An individual does not have the luxury of evaluating the "good of the many"
when they are unemployed by innovation. Equally horrid from the individual's
perspective is discovering the skills they've spent a life time accruing are
suddenly worthless and make them unhireable.

White-collar workers have only just started feeling this pressure of good jobs
disappearing only leaving more menial and lower-paid jobs.

To ignore that some people are harmed by innovation is as silly as pretending
that all innovation is a positive.

It's also important to note that you can't just credit changes in living
standard to technological innovation. Soft innovations in things like politics
and philosophy are AT LEAST as important as technological innovation.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> To ignore that some people are harmed by innovation is as silly as
> pretending that all innovation is a positive.

You know who really got hammered by innovation? Tobacco companies.

The fact that some people are harmed by innovation doesn't mean we shouldn't
ignore them.

------
Sir_Substance
This is a pretty sanctimonious article, again attempting to push the agenda
that all new technology is good technology, and all resistors are luddites.

Be cautious of this standpoint, technology suffers from a confirmation bias,
we tend not to remember the technology that fails, the technology that lowers
quality of life, or the technology that kills people.

Here are some counter-cases for you all: 1\. 1920's era radiation craze. Water
energizers, xray shoe fitting etc. 2\. Communism 3\. Airships

There's nothing wrong with scrutiny, and nothing wrong with taking your time
exploring an idea, dealing with it's repercussions at a manageable rate.
Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.

For example, we're only just now starting to see countries start to bring the
hammer down on companies that push their employees to be contactable 24/7
without paying them to be on call. Mobile phones have been around for how
long? The legislative system has inertia, and sometimes it's worth giving it
time to catch up.

~~~
antisthenes
> Here are some counter-cases for you all: 1. 1920's era radiation craze.
> Water energizers, xray shoe fitting etc. 2. Communism 3. Airships

Not sure what communism has in common with the other 2, considering it is:

1\. Not a technology. 2\. Has never actually been implemented with success due
to flaws in human nature. 3\. Failed precisely because of lack of technology
to support it (a command economy could be viable, given a high enough
technological level and sophisticated models to predict the necessary outputs
in real-time)

If there ever was something that failed because it threatened the established
way of doing things, communism was it.

~~~
adventured
> Has never actually been implemented with success due to flaws in human
> nature

The flaw is in Communism, not human nature.

The very system you claim could theoretically work - given enough
technological development - is fully incapable of ever producing that
technology to begin with. That's just another excuse in over a century of
endless excuses for why command economies fail and fail so dramatically. That
specific excuse regarding technology has existed at least since the 1960s.
Fortunately, human nature will always thwart command economies.

~~~
cortesoft
My perpetual motion machine works great, except for this flaw in the laws of
physics that is keeping it from working.

------
anexprogrammer
We also have a happy habit of over-embracing the new. Radium cures, lead in
petrol, Heroin, Thalidomide, electropathy (being buzzed by high voltages for
the "health" benefits), arsenic pills to increase libido.

It's only some years later we realise whether it was a great idea, a really
stupid one or a straight up con. So a little reluctance and wariness,
especially in a world where everything is marketed as being a brilliant idea,
is probably a very good thing.

Self driving cars are _definitely_ in the don't know yet category for
instance.

A firmly one-sided article promoting a new book.

~~~
venomsnake
The problem with self driving cars is they aren't. Too many asterisks and fine
prints. You cannot jump across pit in two jumps. And that is exactly what they
are trying to do now.

The car is self-driving until the moment it isn't. And being aware of your
surroundings but not driving is extremely exhausting. And you have just a
second or two to react.

~~~
dredmorbius
The case history of highly trained vehicle operators, assigned at several per
vehicle, failing to respond appropriately, _over a course of several minutes_
to a failure of self-driving mechanisms is particularly sobering.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447)

~~~
studentrob
Yup, that air france flight and I would guess many train incidents too.

I'm surprised we do not compare self driving cars to trains more often. Trains
are on _tracks_ and still require drivers who have to hold onto deadman
switches.

Full automation of cars with no driver are not coming any time soon.

~~~
dredmorbius
Specific to AF447:

1\. Multiple pilots in the cockpit.

2\. 3.5 minutes of fully-stalled descent.

3\. _Exceptionally_ high degrees of training. These are skilled professional
pilots, specifically drilled in mishaps, and independently aware and capable
of discussing or diagnosing the situation.

Multiple modes of failure occurred (it's a fascinating case study), starting
from bad sensor design (prone to icing) and weather conditions (icing) leading
to loss of airspeed indication. Lack of feedback between pilot and copilot
controls, and input-averaging, combined with failure of the co-pilot to
relinquish control of aircraft to the pilot, led directly to control-and-
response failures which ended in impact of aircraft with the sea at over 100
knots _each_ of vertical and horizontal velocity components.

What it _wasn 't_ was some distracted inexperienced teenager crusing in
daddy's Autopilot Tesla whilst distracted on mobile calls, texts, and showing
off to other passengers.

Trains and tracked vehicles are another good case in point.

Automobile autopilots will have to respond to degraded conditions by adapting
to safer modes -- lower speeds and recognising that they're operating out of
their design parameters. It doesn't seem Tesla are doing this. Google's
approach seems more conservative.

~~~
studentrob
> Automobile autopilots will have to respond to degraded conditions by
> adapting to safer modes -- lower speeds and recognising that they're
> operating out of their design parameters. It doesn't seem Tesla are doing
> this. Google's approach seems more conservative.

Yeah. Tesla seems pretty committed to enabling hands off driving for minutes
at a time.

------
ktRolster
We are seeing that still today: plenty of irrational opposition to GMOs.
Eventually years from now they'll replace the old stuff, and people will
wonder what all the fuss was about.

~~~
noam87
Irrational? The problem isn't replacing "engineered via slow selection" corn
vs "efficiently GMO'ed corn".

The problem is replacing over 300 unique varieties of corn, and over _40,000_
unique varieties of rice with 3 or 4 patented, flavourless, often less
nutritious varieties.

Stop pretending all opponents of GMO food are scientifically illiterate new-
age types. I owe my life to GMO (cancer immune therapy)... hell, I _am_ GMO.
But there is nothing inherently good about progress. Nuclear technology can be
used to provide clean, cheap energy to entire cities... or it can be used to
eradicate an entire town in a matter of seconds and bring decades of
unimaginable human suffering.

Using GMO to help third world countries grow foods they otherwise couldn't?
Great. But that's not the full story, is it.

Where is the great progress in getting the same bland, flavourless, overly-
sweet two or three varieties of rice, corn, and potatoes in every friggen
store? Is driving Indian farmers to suicide and suing small farmers who
accidentally grow your crop because the wind blew progress? Is destroying
thousands of years of man-driven biodiversity progress?

Coming from a country where real vegetables are sold, it's depressing.
Everything tastes the same in North America. Every salad, every sauce. Same
shit.

People don't oppose Monsanto because they hate science, they oppose monsanto
because it's the Enola Gay of GMO.

~~~
bduerst
Your comment is a pretty accurate depiction of the irrational opposition to
GMOs.

Monocultures have been an agricultural practice since the 1800s, long before
GMOs and Monsanto. It's for sure a risky practice, but even if you removed
Monsanto or even GMO technology from the agricultural industry, you would
still have farmers monocropping hybrids.

It seems you're more upset at what agriculture has become under capitalism and
economies of scale, because the majority of consumers select for food based on
lowest price, and not flavor or variety like you prefer.

~~~
xorcist
Because monocultures have been around for over a century, opposing them is
irrational? That doesn't make sense. If your goal is to increase biodiversity,
it would (at least on the surface of it) seem entirely rational to boycott GMO
products. Would you care to elaborate why this is not the case?

~~~
bduerst
See this sentence:

>[Monoculture's] for sure a risky practice, but even if you removed Monsanto
or even GMO technology from the agricultural industry, you would still have
farmers monocropping hybrids.

Attributing monocultures to GMO is irrational.

------
pessimizer
The post-Bezos Post's stories are terrible, but their headlines are worse.
There is absolutely no support given in this article for the premise that
"humans" in general opposed coffee and refrigeration; so unless they were
going for the weakest form of that ambiguous sentence ("at least two humans
once opposed coffee and refrigeration"), using this premise as a springboard
to diagnose all people against GM foods, AI, and the "gig economy" as falling
into a historically predictable cognitive bias is just pop science garbage.

How about this as a headline: _Some humans welcomed coffee and refrigeration,
some didn 't, and during their respective introductions to any particular
culture, most people were unaware of the existence of either product or didn't
feel like they knew enough about either of them to have an opinion: why all
humans don't unanimously agree on everything immediately, or ever._

------
rm_-rf_slash
I'm reminded of a section of Edward Bernays' "Crystallizing Public Opinion,"
where he argued that people are inherently tribal and assume identities for
themselves, which, by necessity, requires that they also view their identity
as being _not_ a part of the other side.

It's like the Dr Seuss story where one guy gets a star tattoo, then everyone
wants stars, then one person wants to be different so they remove their
tattoo, then everyone wants to be different so they remove theirs, and it
continues back and forth.

I think the perspective to keep in mind about this piece is not that people
are afraid of _new_ things, but rather, _different_ things. When I lived in
the city, I couldn't imagine life without walkable access and being in the
middle of the action. When I moved to the suburbs, I couldn't imagine life
without abundant space and tranquility. Now I'm back in the city.
Technological advancement had nothing to do with those perceptions, but my
resistance was still there, on both sides.

------
brendoncrawford
I am sure there were also people who opposed asbestos for home construction.
We don't sit here with our hindsight telescopes and call them fearful
simpletons . This article suffers from a survivor and confirmation bias.

------
fossuser
This reminds me of a 'better' New Yorker article from a while back:
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-
ideas](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas).

It talks about how anesthesia was quickly adopted, but scrubbing in before
surgery to reduce infection was not.

Interesting mixture of cultural issues and how people behave.

------
pkaye
There is a great book "A History of the World in 6 Glasses" that talks about
how coffee and other drinks were discovered and spread around the world.
Fascinating to read.

------
_nedR
> The same theme is playing out today as some lawmakers and consumers question
> the safety of driverless cars, the economic impact of automation or the
> security of mobile banking

Am i the only who has serious reservations about mobile banking? It completely
undoes 2FA (I hear banks in the US don't use 2FA, but it is mandatory for all
online transactions in India).

I mean if you lose your phone you lose your bank a/c. Your android phone is
highly insecure. Microsoft got flak for dropping XP support after a decade.
Your typical android phone stops recieving updates after 2-3 years. And since
in the mobile security paradigm, the user is just another security threat to
be mitigated, there is nothing you can do about it (short of doing a risky
root of your phone, which btw would stop many banking apps from working ).
Already there are viruses in the wild which are rooting millions (yes,
millions) of unpatched phones.
[http://www.cmcm.com/blog/en/security/2015-09-18/799.html](http://www.cmcm.com/blog/en/security/2015-09-18/799.html)

Right now these malware are only looking for low-level fruit like steam,
credit cards, and pushing ads. Its only a matter of time before they go after
your bank a/c.

------
akeruu
I find a recent video by Veritasium [0] very much relevant here. As stated,
cognitive ease makes us wary of new or unknown things. It is not simply fear
of the unknown, we literally takes the shortest path to something we know,
hindering ourselves from new discoveries.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cebFWOlx848](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cebFWOlx848)

------
pipio21
Not true. Some humans did, some did not.

There is always enthusiast as well as critics with any new tech.

I have in my house big ads of commercial products With cocaine!! and Heroine!
along with nuclear stuff when it was all the rage and we did not understand
secondary effects of those things.

For me this is a PR propaganda article in a Washington newspaper(the politics
center of US) in order to discredit those that oppose for example GMO, or
paint those that want control in any new tech as lunatics.

If you read it carefully you can identify the tone "look, those changes
improved the lives of those that opposed them, so governments have to do what
we tell them is better for them and favor the new changes"(that will make
richer the people who paid for this bluff article).

------
mrlyc
Extending the list,

9) New technology can be very expensive. For example, a colleague's father
purchased a DVD player in 1998 that cost $3,000 in today's dollar.

10) New technology often has bugs. After Microsoft releases updates, I always
wait a few days to see if there are any reports of problems before updating
Windows (I run Windows 7 so I can still do that).

------
Nomentatus
Coffee caused a lot of harm to health right through maybe the late sixties,
because people tended to use it in the evening and even right before bed, not
realizing how that might be messing them up. My parent's habits at that time
were typical and the later it got, the more likely they were to have a cup of
coffee in their hand.

------
mindcrime
Sounds interesting, and I kinda want to read the book. But... this also sounds
a _little_ bit rehashed, as it seems to cover similar ground to what Geoffrey
Moore covered in _Crossing the Chasm_ [1], or what Everett Rogers discussed in
_Diffusion of Innovations_.[2]

Nonetheless, I think I'll buy this book and read it, just to see if there's
any kernel of novel insight there. After all, for an innovator / entrepreneur,
this is one of the most crucial issues out there.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-High-Tech-
Ma...](https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-High-Tech-
Mainstream/dp/0060517123)

[2]: [https://www.amazon.com/Diffusion-Innovations-5th-Everett-
Rog...](https://www.amazon.com/Diffusion-Innovations-5th-Everett-
Rogers/dp/0743222091)

------
drawkbox
Drones for commerce/shipping, information and fun definitely fall into this
category. So many benefits yet so many people against it. Probably same with
self-driving cars yet we get on planes that are largely auto-pilot.

In the end, humans as a whole, change very slowly until you get to 50-60%
support/usage.

~~~
agumonkey
I wished for beta villages more common. People could look; experience and
appreciate things for what they are. A technological form of tourism.

------
jjgreen
Parmentier convinced a suspicious French public of the benefits of potatoes by
surrounding them by armed guards.

[http://www.factfiend.com/man-convinced-everyone-potatoes-
val...](http://www.factfiend.com/man-convinced-everyone-potatoes-valuable/)

------
jejones3141
The author has an awful lot of faith in government--with added expertise it
may just move from being slow and reactionary to being fast and reactionary.
Government is as much at risk of losing power and influence because of
innovation as incumbent businesses.

------
studentrob
> 8) Innovation is not slow, linear or incremental — but the government
> doesn’t realize that.

The government knows tech moves fast. The issue is mostly #7,

> 7) Technologists often don’t think about the impact their inventions have on
> society.

Public support for new tech sometimes moves slowly.

Politicians' heads are on the chopping block for anything the public feels
they do wrong. One result of that can be slower support of new technology.

There is a societal discussion happening about self driving cars, as car
companies have mentioned [1]

[1] [https://youtu.be/a7mxrlDHv2E?t=1m2s](https://youtu.be/a7mxrlDHv2E?t=1m2s)

------
exabrial
I don't care what you say. I want a damned gigabit ethernet port on my Macbook
Pro. There is simply _ _not enough wireless spectrum available_ _ in an urban
environment for us all to have full gigabit connections without dropped
packets and retransmissions.

And there is nothing wrong with the standard headphone j ack.

Apple's new Dongle Driven Development™ methodology sucks.

~~~
vbezhenar
You can buy ethernet-thunderport adapter, it works. I don't need ethernet port
and I'm happy that I don't have to "pay" for it (with money or size or
weight).

------
khedoros
> But coffee took much longer — centuries longer — to catch on in Germany,
> France or England, where people were hooked on beer, wine and tea,
> respectively.

From what I understood, coffee was common in England before tea was, and tea
was first introduced as another option within established coffeehouses.

------
patcheudor
Articles like this and frankly even the statistics on the safety of autonomous
vehicles are a red herring distracting us from where the focus needs to be on
the development of this technology. Consider that if the same life saving
autopilot technology Elon Musk is pushing was rolled out as a backup, rather
than a primary control and turned on by default on every Tesla, far, far more
lives would be saved beyond just allowing full-time autopilot or a full-time
human in control.

That's right, keep the driver engaged because we know the outcome of the EULA
whereby people swear they'll pay attention when autopilot is enabled, they
won't, they can't, it's not how the human brain works. Rather, autopilot
should function as a backup to the human driver in the near term as the
technology is developed. If it senses a pending collision, kick in. Simple,
simple. A computer won't disengage because it's not in control, it will always
be vigilant as a backup to the human, but a human will never be a backup to a
computer, we aren't built that way.

But you might say: "Oh, Mr. Smarty Pants, if the driver knows there's an
autopilot backup wouldn't the driver just let it take over?" Well, there's an
easy solution to that. Just like a computer can be taught to drive a car, it
can also be taught to sense when the driver isn't paying attention. It can
kick off the radio, turn off the AC, sound an alarm, or even just pull the car
safely to the side of the road. The little experiment we are currently playing
with everyone's lives must be better managed. As a security researcher who's
uncovered thousands of bugs over the course of the last two decades, without
question, the code that Tesla or anyone else in this space is producing is not
of sufficient quality for a life critical system. Where are the independent
lab certifications? Where's the university research? It's not there, it's too
early in the game and that's why people need to set their ego's aside and do
the right thing. Computers at this stage of the game are for backup, not
primary.

~~~
illumin8
Why not just do as you suggest ("kick off the radio, turn off the AC, sound
and alarm, or even just pull the car safely to the side of the road") if the
driver isn't paying attention?

You can still do all that you suggest while providing semi-autonomous driving
capabilities.

------
abtinf
"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads
armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all
had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision
unborrowed, and the response they received—hatred. The great creators—the
thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the
men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new
invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane
was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia
was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They
fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won." -Ayn Rand, The
Fountainhead

~~~
antisthenes
That's a nice tid-bit of libertarian drivel, but it fails to mention that for
innovation to be possible, the thinking class needs to be liberated from the
toils of manual and physical labor and be endowed with a surplus of time and
costly education at the expense of the (then farmer) worker class.

They didn't stand alone most of the time and were heavily sponsored or
subsidized by governments to gain a competitive advantage in warfare or any
other area.

Not to mention the obvious survivorship bias.

~~~
mindcrime
_That 's a nice tid-bit of libertarian drivel, but it fails to mention that
for innovation to be possible, the thinking class needs to be liberated from
the toils of manual and physical labor and be endowed with a surplus of time
and costly education at the expense of the (then farmer) worker class._

Meh. I don't buy the idea that there's a special "thinking class" who are
solely imbued with the magical power of "innovation", or the idea that
education is something that is gained at the expense of the "working class."

Education is something that's attainable by pretty much everyone who at least
gets over the bar of being literate, and who has some work ethic and access to
a library. Not all education means going off to a small, private, (expensive)
liberal arts college for four years. Sometimes it's somebody reading books by
candlelight after spending their day plowing fields.

~~~
Noseshine

        > I don't buy the idea that there's a special "thinking class"
    

What he means isn't about genetics but about opportunity. And the opportunity
to get even a basic education was severely lacking until the 20th century,
while on the other hand the need to work work work starting from a very young
age for the working class didn't exactly leave room to study, even if you knew
what that is.

    
    
        > Education is something that's attainable by pretty much everyone
    

Only in recent times. The original quote starts with _" Throughout the
centuries..."_, so this is about a longer period, and throughout most of it
that opportunity you speak of did not exist for the majority of the
population.

The statement is about a time when productivity was just high enough to free
_some_ (few) people from the toils of daily live. It's not like there was no
progress at all, that class was getting larger over the millenia, but the
explosion (in productivity) happened only in the (late) 19th century.

~~~
mindcrime
_What he means isn 't about genetics but about opportunity._

Who said anything about genetics?

 _Only in recent times. The original quote starts with "Throughout the
centuries...", so this is about a longer period, and throughout most of it
that opportunity you speak of did not exist for the majority of the
population._

That's all relative and not really relevant to the overall point. There have
always been people who managed to innovate relative to their peers, and they
haven't always come from a special "thinking class".

~~~
Noseshine

        >  There have always been people
    

That "argument" is on the level of "my grandfather smoked and died cancer-free
at 96" (so don't tell me smoking causes cancer).

In other words, we were not talking about extremely rare individual cases -
the rarer the farther back in time you go. The science for and during the
industrial revolution wasn't driven by poor farmers and workers. That
statement remains true even if you should manage to find some poor fellow who
did manage it. Even today we still have the problem of way too low upward
mobility from the working class, even though they _could_ do it without nearly
as much trouble as in the past!

~~~
mindcrime
_Even today we still have the problem of way too low upward mobility from the
working class, even though they could do it without nearly as much trouble as
in the past!_

Sure, there are a lot of things we should do to promote upward mobility. But
we've gotten away from the point of the quote that kickstarted this particular
branch of conversation.

------
Illniyar
Coffee, sure. Some still oppose it. But refrigerators? I doubt it, unless you
were an ice man. I can think of nothing less controversial then keep your food
from spoiling.

~~~
daxfohl
My mother in law, a traditional Chinese brought on a small village farm in
Malaysia, to this day only begrudgingly accepts refrigeration, as a necessary
evil that makes food less healthy.

~~~
Mister_Snuggles
I'm curious - what is the thinking behind "...makes food less healthy"?

Is the thought that fridges give off some kind of chemical that affects the
food? Is it the act of making the food cold itself that makes it less healthy?
Is she opposed to electric refrigeration, or would something like an old
school icebox[0] be objectionable too?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebox)

~~~
daxfohl
The coding term would be "FUD". I'm sure you've noticed the trend for older
people in all cultures to believe every email that gets forwarded to them, and
forward it on. In Chinese culture, a large chunk of that is FUD related to
health stuff. Remember Chinese medicine goes back millennia, so there's a lot
of confusion about what to believe among that generation too, so they feel
like they better follow everything just to be safe.

To this issue specifically, I think it's more of a shelf-life concern, that
you can't artificially lengthen the shelf life of a food without corrupting it
somehow. In that regard, I can't say she doesn't have a point. That the movie
"Better Life Through Chemistry" is a satire is somewhat telling.

------
dredmorbius
For a balance to the optimsim of this piece (it's not clear whether or not
Juma's book is similarly technotopian, and his publishing history[1] suggests
some temperence) is Michael and Joyce Heusemann's _Techo-Fix_ , which looks at
some of the negative implications of technology, central of which is the law
of unintended consequences -- it's simply impossible for all the implications
of a technology to be known in advance.

Comments here mention many of the false-starts in technology -- concepts which
were overhyped, or which proved disasterous. Powerful new substances have long
been used in medicine: herbs, minerals and elements (notably mercury), coal,
coal tar, and petroleum, electricity, magnetism, and radiation. Some
successfully. Many not.

There are ideas long hyped which have failed to materialise, particularly
individual air transports, jet packs, and flying cars. But also more vialble
concepts such as personal submersibles. Yes, they exist. No, they're not
commonplace.

And there are entire societies and cultures which have emerged based on the
principle of being late adopters of the technology curve, probably most
notably to Americans, the Amish.

I disagree with Juma's assertion that technology progresses at an accelerating
rate. There are technologies (fire, the wheel, automobiles, airplanes,
railroads (and in particular railroad brakes)) which show a distinct
development curve: slow emergence, accelerating takeoff, inflection point,
stable (perhaps slowly improving) higher bound. Trains today use a brake
developed in the 1880s. Automobile _and_ aircraft patent issues reached a peak
in the 1920s, and in the case of automobiles, actually fell afterward.
Information technology is among the odd men out, though for reasons an
ontology of technological mechanisms might help illustrate[2], but even it
shows pronounced limits.

Google have recently announced an application of their AI technology in
managing power within datacenters.[3] The multi-millionfold increase in
computing power from 1970 to today has resulted in ... the ability to shave
15% off electrical consumption. Given a Moore's Law[4] doubling of compute
capabilities and efficiencies every 18-24 months, that's roughly 3 months of
increased chip effiency gains, and a one-time benefit. The Jevons Paradox also
suggests it won't result in actual reductions in energy use, but an increase.

________________________________

Notes:

1\.
[https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3AJuma%2C+Calestou&qt=r...](https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3AJuma%2C+Calestou&qt=results_page)

2\. See: [https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-
ms8nww](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-ms8nww) Paired with
information technology, I'd include cities, transport and communications
networks, and trade networks.

3\. [http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2016/0721/Google-goes-
gr...](http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2016/0721/Google-goes-greener-How-
AI-helps-Google-conserve-energy)

4\. Or Wright's Law, see J. Doyne Farmer.

------
dizzy3gg
"you know they refused jesus too" \- bob dylan

------
ObeyTheGuts
If u drink coffee u are broken individual

------
ascotan
paywall fail

~~~
libman
[http://archive.is/fsdAr](http://archive.is/fsdAr)

------
webtechgal
Why we often hate new stuff?

Original piece tl;dr.

My simple, stupid take:

A combination of the law of inertia + fear of the unknown.

------
smegel
Especially new operating systems from Microsoft.

------
Finnucane
He's wrong about coffee and refrigerators. It's true that some places tried to
ban coffee due its stimulant effects, coffeehouses spread through Europe
pretty quickly in the 17th century.

~~~
btilly
No, he's right about both.

Here is the story for coffee. Coffeehouses were banned in Mecca from 1512 and
1524 before they became accepted. Then according to legend, opposition to
imports of coffee lead to Pope Clement VIII being asked to ban it around 1600.
He decided not to do so, and the rise of coffee houses came later. Then in
both England and Germany, coffeehouses were seen as such places of disrepute
that women were banned from going to them!

On refrigerators, early refrigerators used ammonia, which was toxic if it
leaked. And early designs did leak. This lead to valid safety concerns.
Concerns that were later addressed by the invention of freon. (Which is an
unbelievably safe chemical for everything except the ozone layer!)

~~~
ktRolster
_Then in both England and Germany, coffeehouses were seen as such places of
disrepute that women were banned from going to them!_

To be fair to our German and British friends, depending on how coffee was
introduced (sailors/pirates), they may actually _have_ been places of
disrepute.....

~~~
Finnucane
And even if they were places of disrepute, there were a lot of them, and
people went to them.

------
carlesfe
Funny, just a few days ago I wrote on the topic. Please allow me a self plug:
[http://cfenollosa.com/blog/living-in-a-disrupted-
economy.htm...](http://cfenollosa.com/blog/living-in-a-disrupted-economy.html)

In summary, Luddism sells, though it's irrational and history usually proves
it wrong. Technology mostly changes society for the better in the long term,
even though it needs to disrupt old business models first.

