You gotta be kidding me. How could they put millions of tons of TNT into a bomb? That’s a pile of manure.
Oh yeah, like the one grandma uses to get drunk, or the one that made grandpa’s teeth fall out?
Wow! I bet it might be able to add up 100 numbers in just 1 minute! But that’s as fast as any mechanism like that can operate without the gears falling off. Sounds like a dead end technology to me.
The Scientific Revolution ended in about 1700 give or take. It was replaced by the Enlightenment when people began taking what was developed during the Scientific Revolution and applying it to political, philosophical and social constructs. The Enlightenment though was also over by 1840 since the Enlightenment is generally seen as ending around 1800 or so and was replaced by the ‘Age of Reflection’ or ‘The Romantic Period.’ This was a backlash against Enlightenment ideals which basically brought about a bunch of rather bloody revolutions and was seen by many philosophers as egotists run amok. They advocated that rather than bending nature to their will, we should live in harmony with nature, both our own and that of the entire natural world. It’s a largely forgotten period unfortunately, but one I think we would have done better to learn from, but I digress. By 1840, there’s not a real formal ‘Age’ defined, but I think you could call it arguably ‘The Age of Positivism.’ Positivism is a complete rejection of the Age of Reflection. It holds that the only knowledge is empirical and that science is the only real way of viewing the world. It rejects anything transcendent and even those things which are non-quantifiable. It’s disgustingly reductionist, but unfortunately, it’s still a major paradigm in our current world, really only challenged by post-modern thought and those still holding on to religious philosophies. Regardless though, the Scientific Revolution was a great era in our history, but well before 1840.
As others have said, I think there’s a major difference between new technology being in existence and it being incorporated into everyday life.
Look at air travel. Airplanes have been around during the lifetime of everyone reading this thread. But if planes disappeared tomorrow, how much effect would if have in people’s lives? Air travel isn’t part of everyday existence.
Compare it to car travel. If cars disappeared tomorrow, it would have a huge impact. People wouldn’t be able to do basic things like going to work or obtaining food. Society is built around car travel.
That’s the difference I mentioned above; air travel exists and car travel is part of everyday life. And I feel that in the period of 1840 to 1910, a lot of new technology came into existence. But it was the period of 1910 to 1955 when that new technology became part of everyday life.
As an aside, isn’t 1910 long before what we think of as old-timey radio broadcasts, while 1955 is breaking news live on television in between I LOVE LUCY episodes and THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN in color and so on?
I think you could say that the age of Broadcast Radio began in about 1920 when KDKA in Pittsburgh went on the air. Prior to this, there were certainly entertainment broadcasts, but they were more amateur and the purview of enthusiasts. In 1910, there would have been a small number of people with radio broadcasting ability. There were a few instances of concerts being broadcast to a half-dozen receivers, but essentially radio was not a universal medium and almost no non-hobbyist gave it much thought or knew anything about it.
OK, enough with the silly games. If you can explain a car to someone who knows nothing about cars, you can explain a big bomb to someone who knows about smaller bombs.
Anyone who has seen a train can understand what a car is. Understanding how a bomb can contain millions of tons of TNT is not readily explainable, even to scientists of the time who have never heard of a neutron.
I was going to mention the same thing. A car might have been amazing to someone from the late 1700s but the idea of mechanical devices for transportation shouldn’t come as a surprise to someone from the 1840s. Furthermore, in cities, not only would they be familiar with trains but also horse-drawn omnibuses.
“It works in a different way. If you have some spare time, I could give you an overview of the differences.”
Someone who knew of the existence of TNT should be aware that different explosives can vary greatly in power with the same amount of material (compare TNT with gunpowder, for example), but even someone who wasn’t should be able to understand the concept of different materials having the same function to a different extent. Even someone from the stone age would have direct experience of that concept due to the variation in types of stone. For example, a blade made from flint would be much more durable than a blade made from sandstone.
“One that works much better than that because it directly kills germs without killing healthy cells.”
Someone who knew about TNT should know about the germ theory of disease because it was widely known before TNT was invented. But if they didn’t, it could quickly be explained to them.
Granted, that one would take a lot more explaining. Babbage very often encountered that (and worse - “On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”) when he was trying to explain the idea of a computer. Hardly anyone understood it at the time.
But on the whole, if the time traveller remained calm enough it should be possible to quickly give them enough of an explanation of technological advances for it to not be overwhelmingly confusing and disorientating magic to them. After all, they are human. Same intelligence, same versatility of mind, etc.
The antibiotic is a weak case. Explaining how computers work to people even today can be difficult. But you could not readily convince someone that millions of tons of TNT could be put in a bomb small enough to carry in a sturdy wagon, or explain to them that it’s based on a fission or fusion reaction. Life was just that much different in 1910 for someone who was born in 1840. They knew about cars before they dies but probably never rode in one. They knew about aircraft but probably never flew in one. It would have seemed greatly different for them, but nothing like someone born in 1910 would have experienced by 1955.
Nobody is suggesting lying to this hypothetical person and telling them that a nuclear bomb contains millions of tonnes of TNT. I have no idea where that idea came from - nobody is suggesting doing it.
Telling someone from 1910 that one thing works in a different way to another thing and has a much stronger effect is not something that should be incomprehensible to them. It shouldn’t even be strange or surprising to them. It’s not a new or complex concept.
We’re not talking about making a time traveller from the past an expert in future (to them) technology. We’re just talking about giving them enough initial information so that it isn’t overwhelmingly alien to them. A very simple explanation is enough for that. It’s enough for people today - few people have more than a superficial understanding of the technology they use, let alone technology they don’t have any involvement with (like nuclear bombs) and nobody has a detailed understanding of all of technology.
Given an hour and a common language, I think I could make a good stab at giving any human from any period of time a very simple overview of a nuclear bomb (whether they’d believe it is another matter). Explaining it someone from 1910 would be relatively easy, since they would have had some exposure to science and would have experienced rapid development in knowledge and technology in their own lifetime. They might even already know about subatomic particles.
Culture shock probably wouldn’t be mainly about advances in technology, at least not as long as you could get the time traveller to a quiet, safe space and talk with them.
That would probably be indoors and probably result in questions about the things in the room. I’d be completely lost if they asked me how the lights in my house worked - they’re LEDs and I have no idea how they work. But that ignorance of the details of how that technology works doesn’t make me confused and panicking from culture shock…and it shouldn’t do for them either. “Pressing this makes them light up and pressing it again makes them go dark. It’s like lighting a lamp, but brighter and more convenient.” That would do for most people. Most people don’t really care how things work, just how to use them.
You’re missing the point. You don’t have an hour and a common language. This isn’t about time travel. This is about how much the world changes across a period of time. Nobody in the time period 1840-1910 had to encounter the kind of change to the world that nuclear energy and bombs created, along with all the other advances in technology and the course of human events that lead to two World Wars.
To me it’s not necessarily about the nuclear bomb and the space race, and I do not know if those advances would be more baffling than the appearance of the car. It’s the disruption in lifestyle that would be jarring.
In 1840 you had the vast majority of people living in rural areas and small towns and shooting the shit and drinking for fun.
In 1910 you had lots of people living in rural areas, small towns, and large cities and shooting the shit and drinking and watching organized sports for fun.
In 1955 you had people living in the suburbs and driving to work every day, and watching TV and listening to the radio and watching movies for fun.
In 2018 you had people living in the suburbs and mostly driving to work every day, and watching TV and the internet and listening to the radio and watching movies for fun.
The major break in lifestyle is 1955.
I was replying to your posts, which were specifically about explaining 1955 technology to someone from 1910. Which means time travel. Had it been someone who had lived through that period, there would be no need to explain it to them. A very large number of people lived through that time period and managed well enough.
During the time period 1840-1910 there were other things that radically changed society. Railways were possibly the most important. They existed before 1840, but it was the mid 19th century that saw rail networks expand greatly. That transformed movement over distances of more than a few miles and greatly reduced the cost of a ticket, making it affordable to a large proportion of the population. That changed a great deal about life in a way that had never happened before. Places that had been a week’s travel apart became a couple of hours travel apart with trains every few hours, i.e. routinely accessible. Messages could be carried at a speed and quantity never even dreamed of before. Practical large scale telegraphy also emerged in that time period, making communication at a previously unthinkable speed possible and normal. Those two things fundamentally changed government too, making greatly increased centralisation possible. It also changed politics in general, because for the first time it was possible for activists to communicate, co-ordinate and even meet physically over an area of more than a few square miles. It changed science, news, law enforcement…pretty much everything. Science and technology mushroomed over that time period.
Partly as a result, 1840-1910 saw a lot of political and social change too. Maybe not so much in the USA (I don’t know much about USA history of that time period), but there were huge changes in western Europe. The biggest changes here in the UK were arguably 1810-1840 (mass civil unrest, voting reform campaigning, the Six Acts, the Great Reform Act, etc), but a lot changed socially and politically from 1840 to 1910.
I’d not sure which period had the most change. I am sure the difference isn’t as great as you’re arguing that it is. I’m also sure that you were talking about explaining 1955 technology to a person from 1910 and that’s what I was replying to.
Of the choices presented I would pick 1910-1955 in 1st, with 1840-1910 as a close 2nd. Maybe it’s because I actually lived the changes, but the developments of the 21st century, while very impressive, don’t measure up in my book to the changes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For those arguing for this most recent era, we’re comparing the internet (mostly since I put the start date for ordinary people at roughly 1995) and smartphones vs. paper books and wall phones. While significant, I think the difference between making a trip in a car with google maps vs. a paper map is not nearly as big as the difference between a car and a horse and buggy. Similarly the difference between a smart phone and a wall phone is nowhere close to the difference between a wall phone and the pony express, and these are the areas that the 21st century has shown the most progress. In other areas the difference is much larger. Someone in 2018 transported to 1999 isn’t going to notice much difference, if any, in the medical care they receive. OTOH many people whose lives were easily saved with 1955 medical technology would probably have died in 1910. As far as the earlier eras go, I also think most people transported in time would probably not notice a major difference. Someone who lived in ancient Crete in the era of the Minoans would probably not have felt terribly out of place in 12th or 13th century Crete with regards to the different levels of technology.
But with the Internet, that “trip” might not be in a car at all. Instead of going to the library, you can bring up the library from a desk in your own home. Or hold a face-to-face business meeting with a client in Argentina or Japan, who’s also sitting in their own home.
Several people have defended their choice of era with “technological advancement at that time was faster than it ever had been before”. But the thing is, that’s true of any point in history. Technology is exponential.
Yes, but the fact the technology is exponential means that up until quite recently technological change was not a big issue. Technology changed slowly and gradually over the course of generations so people didn’t really notice it.
Take a person from 1600 who lived until 1675; the technology that existed when they were born was still relevant when they died. The same would be true for somebody who was born in 1700 and died in 1775.
But a person who was born in 1800 and died in 1875 lived through some major changes; telegraphs and steam power became important in how people lived. And that’s nothing in comparison to how technology changed people’s lives between 1900 and 1975.
Pre-history - 4500 BCE, without question.
Humanity went from exclusively composed of scattered bands of hunter-gatherers in one small corner of Africa, spread all over the globe, and developed in several different places all of the attributes of complex social organization - agriculture, the first cities, the first chiefdomships and kings, monumental architecture.
No advances since have been more fundamental transformations of humanity’s situation than these. We still live in complex societies using cities, ruled by central leadership, reliant on agriculture - just more advanced versions of these things.
I’ll agree with Malthus. I think that a lot of these guesses are getting too hung up on gadgets. Gadgets are nice and they might be strange to our ancestors, but they aren’t fundamental shifts in worldview or society. Planes may make trade easier, but they don’t fundamentally alter how trade works or even globalizing forces. We aren’t even really using it to eliminate local famines which you think would be its biggest boon. For fundamental shifts in addition to the early, early shifts, I think that the early modern period in Europe was truly transformational. We went from monarchy to democracy, the Protestant Reformation essentially democratized religion, it was the period of actual globalization with Europeans colonizing every available piece of real estate in the world and setting up complex trade networks that would completely change the trajectory of capitalism.
I disagree with the general idea here that changes in technology, changes initially available only to the few (especially on a global scale), is the definition of “dramatic global change”. Yes, for a hypothetical man born in 1830s England, one able to afford the new gadgets produced in his lifetime, his “world” changed in ways incomprehensible to someone born 2,000 years earlier. However, for a woman born in Calcutta on the same day, her life was unaffected and the traditional rhythms of life continued largely unaffected by these inventions and technologies.
Except for things involving the British. And they had already been there for 200 years, which, for her… and billions like her worldwide… was the first harbinger of the Shape of Things to Come.
The overall trend of human history, since 1 Million BC, was towards a world of differing civilizations so that by, say, 1500 CE, there were, at least, 7 distinct centers of civilization in the world where the ways people organized their lives differed dramatically - from their religions to the shapes of vehicles used to carry goods (cart? Llama? Horse?) to how they organized their lives governmentally and more. (Off the top of my head, in 1492 there were the civilizations of the Inca, West Europe, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Islam, North American Nations… who am I forgetting?)
Today that is no longer the case. The arc of human history shifted, for the first time ever, to a world dominated by the extraordinary success of one of those centers of civilization, a capitulation so total to the point where it, and it alone, remains as a true civilization, having replaced the others and reducing them to differing “cultures” within the gambit of what is no longer considered “western civilization” but “modern civilization”, the “developed world” as it is referred today.
This process of global integration began in 1350-1570, which is why that period received my vote. The integration of the entire globe into one civilization is the single biggest global historical development since the dawn of history. Bigger than literacy. Bigger than WW2. Bigger than industrialization. A lot of technological, social, organizational, and economic developments occurred which made this happen, yes, but the eventual result is greater than the sum of the pieces.
Think about China: A proud civilization for 2,000 years, finally having, for survival in the new “Western” world, to form a national government dedicated to the ideals of a German Jew who never went east of the Elbe river, spoke of Asia with contempt, and developed a philosophy/economic theory based upon his and a friends studies of the working class in Britain… then, because they saw America winning the Cold War, modified their economy and society to where they can follow the dictates of a Scottish moral philosopher and his intellectual descendents, integrating into a global economy which got its start in Italy with the use of double-entry accounting and the merchant fleets of Genoa and Venice.
And this cultural osmosis was exclusively one-sided - Western Civilization never adopted the ideals of the world except at the most superficial of levels, no, they made the world accept the ideals of Western Civilization.
And this pivot began in the 1350-1570 period, which is why it receives my vote.
However, I can see arguments for the last two periods (1980, 2001) as those are the periods when the benefits of Western, er, “modern” civilization began to be felt on the scale of billions achieving longer lifespans, greater literacy, more calories, industrialization (and post-industrialization), rising incomes, increased pollution, more material goods. And we may be coming upon a new age in Western/Modern Civilization, where the development of the civilization is no longer in the control of the ethnic group which did so much to spread it globally, but in the hands of the supposedly vanquished Chinese/Indian cultures.
But that last is another thread.