Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> “What already happened doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to know that history to build on what they made. In technology, all that matters is tomorrow.”

I think one of the advantages of engineers studying history is that you understand that while the technology we build has never been done before, nothing is inevitable about any of this, and there's no reason to think it should go on forever by itself. Societies have lost literacy (see eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages). There are books that have been lost forever. Technologies have been forgotten until they were rediscovered. And studying history also shows that while technology might change, human nature does not.




The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Cirve is a thing. Ultimately logarithmic.

It's generally cast as personal/individual, but applies to groups, organisations, and cultures as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: