
'Millennium' is full of gratitude for the staggering advances of 1,000 years - howrude
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2016/1124/Millennium-is-full-of-gratitude-for-the-staggering-advances-of-1-000-years
======
lisper
Forget the millennium, just in my lifetime I have seen:

1\. Computers go from room-sized devices that only major institutions could
afford to being disposable commodities. Today I can buy a machine that can run
Linux for less than the cost of one hour of labor at the minimum wage. That in
and of itself is staggering.

2\. The internet. When I was a kid, to get information you had to go to the
library, or have an encyclopedia in your house, or wait for the daily
newspaper (which was actually made of paper) to be delivered. Today I have
direct real-time access to most significant world events (with video!) and
Wikipedia wherever I have a cell connection. And it's all free!

3\. ATM machines. When I was a kid, my parents had to go to the bank and wait
in line to withdraw cash to get through the weekend. When I was in college, if
you wanted to travel abroad, you carried cash or traveller's checks. If you
ran out, you were hosed.

4\. Genome sequencing, self-driving cars, and chess-playing computers that can
beat human grand masters go from a pipe dream to a consumer product.

5\. GPS. Well into my adulthood, if you wanted to figure out where you were,
you had to cross-reference your surroundings to a paper map. It was actually
possible to get lost. Today my cell phone tells me my location accurately
enough that I can tell which room of my house I am in.

I could probably go on.

(Not all the changes have been good. When I was a kid, my friends and I
regularly walked to school and otherwise roamed the neighborhood without adult
supervision. Nowadays, parents get arrested for letting their kids do that.
:-(

~~~
unclenoriega
The truly sad part about your last thing is that the change isn't based on
reality. If anything, it's probably much safer to roam the streets alone,
partially due to all those technologies you mentioned (and others).

~~~
lisper
Very little of people's assessment of the state of the world is based on
reality. Almost everything is better today than it has ever been (at least for
humans, not so much for other species), but many (most?) people are still
convinced that we're on the wrong track. To be sure, we have significant
challenges ahead of us, and things could easily take a turn for the worse. But
right now things are pretty awesome. We're in the middle of the longest
stretch of world peace in history. There is less poverty (in terms of
percentage of the population) than ever. People are healthier and living
longer than ever. And we have Pokemon! It's a golden era.

~~~
babyrainbow
> We're in the middle of the longest stretch of world peace in history...

But what is the status of military expenses?

>There is less poverty (in terms of percentage of the population) than ever.

How much of that is loaned? I mean, aren't more people in perpetual, often
unnecessary, debt now?

>People are healthier and living longer than ever.

And totally dependent on drugs, often from very young, even when they are not
necessary. Not to mention obesity, depression...but hey, more drugs, cola and
fast food.

>And we have Pokemon! It's a golden era.

Sure. I see you now.

The "awesomeness" you see is very superficial, and is quite possibly short
lived. Things are far rotten if you look deep down.

~~~
lisper
> what is the status of military expenses?

World wide? As a percentage of the size of the world economy? Compared to
historical norms? I have no idea. But I'd be surprised if they weren't low.

> How much of that is loaned?

I'm talking about actual wealth, not bean-counting. There are fewer (again, as
a percentage, not in absolute numbers) people without the basic necessities of
life than ever before.

> totally dependent on drugs

Longevity improvements are not due to drugs on which people become dependent.
They are due mainly to better nutrition and hygiene, vaccines, and
antibiotics.

> Sure. I see you now.

To be clear, I was joking about the Pokemon.

> quite possibly short lived

That is certainly true. We can easily squander our good fortune. But one of
the ways we can do that is not to recognize our good fortune for what it is:
good fortune.

~~~
babyrainbow
> people without the basic necessities of life than ever before...

I think this is a bubble. Because where I live, the IT sector has a big
influence. Kids straight out of college were making 10 times more money than
their parents were making. But they also spend like there is no tomorrow. This
spending causes this wealth to be distributed so everyone grow a bit more
richer.

But this is not sustainable. People are paying huge sum of money for mortgage
and credit card bills every month/year. In other words, these people cannot
live three months straight without a heafty pay check. The worse part is that,
they are not skilled at all, even after years of employment..

>They are due mainly to better nutrition and hygiene, vaccines, and
antibiotics.

Better nutrition? What provides better nutrition now than the past years? In
my country we still get vegetables with dangerous amounts of pesticides.
People are starting to have diabetics and choelesrtrol/blood pressure issue in
the early thrities. But they won't rollover and die, thanks to perpetual
healthcare and medication, I mean, for those who can afford.

People everywhere are hooked to antibiotics. "Sneeze? Oh my god, I am having
an infection. Let me just gobble down this antibiotics that my doctor
prescribed me last time". "Headache? let me just take this new wonder pill for
headaches". Yes. People are overstuffed with medicines. You are deluded if you
think otherwise.

>To be clear, I was joking about the Pokemon.

Thank god.

~~~
lisper
> In my country we still get vegetables with dangerous amounts of pesticides.

What country is that? I get the impression you have not traveled much in poor
places because "dangerous levels of pesticides" is definitely a first-world
problem.

~~~
babyrainbow
My country is definitely not a first world country...

>"dangerous levels of pesticides" is definitely a first-world problem

Wow. You seem to have no idea of what you are talking about.

~~~
lisper
> You seem to have no idea of what you are talking about.

Quite possible. So are you going to tell me what country you're talking about,
or are you going to continue to be cagey about it?

------
paganel
> The four core changes he identifies in his book, the “four primary sources
> underlying change over the last millennium,” are a) the weather in terms of
> how it affected food supply, the need for security, the fear of sickness,
> and the “desire for personal enrichment."

I read a book this summer called "The Bourgeois", written by an early 20th
century German sociologist called Sombart, where, among other things, he
explains how one of the decisive factors behind people starting to accumulate
wealth during the Italian Renaissance (when modern capitalism was actually
born) was the simple fact that the head of (business) families from that time
started to track down their money inputs and outputs, always trying to make
sure that the inputs would be bigger than the outputs.

It sounds quite trivial when you call simple additions and subtractions as the
cause of one of the most interesting things to happen to us as a species in
the last 1,000 years (the accumulation of wealth, that is), but I for myself
think that it makes a lot of sense.

~~~
tpeo
I don't think it does. For one, people have an intuitive understanding of
basic arithmetic regardless of whether they're educated or not and this can be
improved through practice.

On the other hand, it supposes that humans are somewhat innately helpless and
just stood by while mathematics was being developed, without making practical
use of it. But humans, as animals in general, are rather restless and will try
until they succeed. Is is how, for example, people eventually discovered how
to make boats despite having very little knowledge of how they actually
worked.

Furthermore, tracking expenses isn't that new. Accounting is much older than
the Renaissance [1]. What the Italians did invent was double-entry bookeeping
[2], and this IMO had less to do with household management than with the
development of finance in 14th and 15th century Italy. I say this because, on
one hand, double-entry bookeeping makes it much easier to track who owes what
to whom; on the other, Italian city-states were the first to issue public
debt, to have moden banks [3] (after the _banca_ ) and had money-lenders
weaseling themselves into power (the Medicis).

[1] :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_accounting#Early_de...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_accounting#Early_development_of_accounting)

[2] :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_accounting#Double-e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_accounting#Double-
entry_bookkeeping)

[3] : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank)

------
graycat
Yup.

Now, to think for just a few seconds, the 1000 years is just 100 decades. So,
list the 100 biggest changes you can think of from wooden ships for open ocean
sailing, Newton's law of gravity, the explanation for how the stars shine,
coal, iron, steel, steam, electricity, radio, the electric light, ..., you get
the idea.

Then, that means that on average over the past 1000 years we had one such
biggie development each 10 years. And in some of those 10 year periods, maybe
we didn't have a biggie, and that means that in some other 10 year period we
had more than one biggie.

Net, the 100 big changes came along at a rate of one each 10 years, which is
fast!

Do the same, that is, the 100 biggest changes, over the past, say, 200 years
-- still have lots of biggies in those years. Now get a biggie on average each
2 years.

We've been screaming ahead!

But, right, we need to go faster!

~~~
internaut
Name me the important technological innovations in the last 40 years that are
not based on (or directly linked to, like shotgun genome sequencing)
computation.

~~~
unlikelymordant
Tell you all the major advances we've had, not including the major advances?
What do you have against computation? Also, crispr will be huge.

The way you define advancement also seems to ignore incremental improvements,
and the incremental improvements weve made in all fields in the last 40 years
is vast.

~~~
internaut
The Internet is of revolutionary importance.

However even with the most sophisticated data per second flows, virtual and
augmented reality, we still need progress in the physical realm or our
infrastructure will fall around our ears while we're constructing the New
World.

> crispr will be huge.

What do you think they said about?

1\. The discovery of DNA.

1.1 The Human Genome Project.

1.1.1 CRISPR

1.1.1.1 ????

The ability to cut and paste DNA is a great advance but people expected
revolutionary steps forward in the past too and were disappointed with actual
results. Anytime you hear 'biotech this' or 'biotech that', recall to mind
only about 16 new biotech drugs are allowed onto the market, and I bet you
cannot name any off the top of your head. That tells you something.

It is worth knowing what our grandparents really thought about the future. I
strongly recommend you watch this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4)

> The way you define advancement also seems to ignore incremental
> improvements, and the incremental improvements weve made in all fields in
> the last 40 years is vast

Far from it!

I am concerned that people are being chronocentric e.g. They have forgotten
that energy prices used to be much, much cheaper. Exponentially cheaper!

I have two proposals for you.

1\. Technology means doing more, with less. Less input, more output.

2\. The basic metric for economic progress is that prices go downwards.

These are straight forward claims. They are not outrageous.

In areas where we have clear progress, like computation, finding downward
trending prices is easy. In other areas the answer is far less clear and I
find people become prone to rationalization instead of imagining a better
possible present and future.

I'm not a pessimist. I just think we could be doing a whole lot more. It took
me considerable time to realize that not everything was progressing and there
were giant gaping holes in that reasoning.

------
anabis
A book celebrating the advance of civilization is only sold in a physical
format :( ?

Or maybe it's coming later, or I am being punished for living in Japan.

