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To: Ilaine who wrote (16877)	3/16/2002 5:53:08 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 74559

< It appears that historians don't rate communication technology as disruptive. Haven't read Schumpeter yet, maybe he does.> Historians wouldn't have a clue. They don't know much about technology and think engineers and their ilk are icky creatures who mess around in the kilns of the industrial revolution. <At any rate, Tylecote doesn't mention the telegraph, the telephone, trans-Atlantic cables, radio, motion pictures, television, or cable TV. When you come right down to it, Internet is in this category. It doesn't move widgets, it moves words and pictures. If we define production as making widgets, then the debate is over. Internet doesn't make better widgets, and it doesn't make widgets better. > Actually CB, that's incorrect. Years ago, I had a customer who made widgets; machined pieces of metal to be precise. The customer and the machines and metal to be machined was located in Auckland. The machines were driven by remote control from Germany, via cyberspace. The local people put the metal in the machine. Then the machine, being driven from the other side of the world, shaped the metal. It was fascinating. It reminds me of the first time I saw a typewriter typing by itself. It was in Canada in 1976. A woman put a piece of paper in the machine, got up and left it to it and the machine typed out the page - it was the first word processor I'd seen. My eyes goggled. Of course she had previously typed it, corrected it and that was the final copy. So, no big deal these days. Just as computers beating Gary Kasparov are no big deal now. But in 1971, with punch cards in mainframes as big as a small house being my view of computers, it was amazing. The internet made better widgets and it made widgets better for my customer. Better and cheaper. The design was still done by people. But that's being diluted as quantum-computing designs become possible. qubit.org People won't be necessary. People will not only not be necessary, they'll be useless in the process. People will stick with what people are good at. What is now in process is bigger than everything combined from the past including all technologies and including language. Of course, each step in the process has been essential, so it's like saying an o-ring on a rocket launcher is trivial compared with the computer in the nose cone. All components are essential so in a way, none are more important or significant that another. It's quite funny that historians don't get it. Few people do appreciate the scale of the changes. They think now that the dot.cosm and the telecosm have fallen below the financial event horizon, that the excitement was a late 20th century flash in the pan. They could not be more wrong. Comparing cyberspace with the telegraph, telephone, trans-Atlantic cables, radio, movies, television and cable tv is like comparing the intellect of an ant with that of a human. Count the petaflops taking place today, compared with 50 years ago. Count the 0s and 1s being sent from one place to another now compared with then. Compare the number of connections now with then - the connections now are like a human brain whereas a tv is a one way single dimensional information flow device. A computer monitor can source a vast array of information at any time from a vast number of places via a vast number of routes and it can be done wirelessly in fast-moving car or plane or space ship. Mqurice