| ▲ | eschulz 5 days ago |
| I'm reminded of how time pieces such as sundials changed societies, and how some ancients almost lost their minds due to this new development. “The Gods confound the man who first found out
How to distinguish the hours---confound him, too Who in this place set up a sundial
To cut and hack my days so wretchedly
Into small pieces
! . . . I can't (even sit down to eat) unless the sun gives leave. The town's so full of these confounded dials . . .”
― Plautus |
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| ▲ | go_elmo 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Finally someone who understands me. Whatever becomes measurable, becomes controllable, which is the antidote to freedom, wildness, life (to some extent).. |
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| ▲ | sdenton4 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | My favorite Samuel Delany story is about a woman in a village who invents writing, and teaches it to all the children. She makes a rule that you're never allowed to write down people's names, as it will inevitably lead to keeping records comparing people, and thus leading to strife... | | | |
| ▲ | supportengineer 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I’m ethically torn whether to upvote this | |
| ▲ | dylan604 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Being able to have simplicity of working on a task until it is done when society didn't have these per hour scheduling concepts. I remember hearing this referenced when learning about Amish and Native American cultures. Essentially, this is what were doing. When it is finished, we move on to next. No arbitrary start/stop time because some hand on a dial is pointing at a certain number. |
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| ▲ | jfengel 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Note that Plautus was a comic writer, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. I'd treat is like a Seinfeld observational humor joke -- realistic but exaggerated. |
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| ▲ | verbify 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > some ancients almost lost their minds due to this new development Platus lived 254 – 184 BC. Sundials are from 1500BC. While it's a great quote, it certainly wasn't a new invention when he wrote it. |
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| ▲ | noosphr 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Electric cars were invented in 1881 a full 4 years before the first internal combustion car. | | |
| ▲ | whaleofatw2022 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Kinda interesting to ask what would have gone different if the infrastructure was in place to make electric cars 'good enough' as far as charging infrastructure. | | |
| ▲ | ben_w 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | As I understand it, the core problem back then was the batteries would mass half the car and lose a third of their maximum capacity in just 500 charging cycles. Back when cars were new, there was no infrastructure for petrol either, that was something you got in tiny quantities from a pharmacy. (The diesel engine can run on vegetable oil, but I don't think Mr Rudolf Diesel himself ever did that?) | | | |
| ▲ | userbinator 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The batteries of the time were far less energy-dense and charged slowly. Lead-acid was the norm for EVs. | |
| ▲ | kjs3 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Infrastructure requires demand, and energy density and convenience of a contemporary battery versus gas engine means that no one was going to demand batteries when ICE was an option. We only figured the downside much later. | | |
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| ▲ | kjs3 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | False equivalence to the white courtesy phone... |
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| ▲ | eschulz 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Being invented doesn't mean that they became commonly used. Many ancient inventions took thousands of years to rollout and be adopted by the vast majority of humans. | | |
| ▲ | mitthrowaway2 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Perhaps, but the quote also doesn't read to me like someone ranting about a new invention, just one that he wished had never been invented. Just like I might find myself occasionally cursing whoever invented the idea of an office building, even though it predates me. | |
| ▲ | verbify 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sure, but is there anything in that quote that suggests it's a reaction to new technology rather than just a rumination on existing technology? |
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| ▲ | xandrius 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yep, they definitely could have bought it from Amazon. | | |
| ▲ | inglor_cz 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The Mediterranean was a tightly connected civilizational region, so if a certain invention was in use anywhere, it would spread at the speed of a sailing ship to the rest of the coast. Already prior to the rise of the Roman Empire, there was a massive network of Phoenician and Greek colonies that would trade with one another constantly, from Cadiz to the Levant. The sea was a highway to them. Amazon did not exist, but cunning merchants absolutely did, and they knew how to make money by selling attractive goods. | |
| ▲ | bee_rider 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don’t really get what this comment is suggesting. It is seemingly sarcastic, because obviously Amazon didn’t exist at the time. But Amazon didn’t invent the concept of long distance trade… |
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| ▲ | WalterBright 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Using a vertical stick to track the sun's position goes back much, much further. |
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| ▲ | zzo38computer 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I do believe that time keeping, computers, and other technology are overused and overly relied on. (There is also damaging other stuff due to these technology, which is another issue. There are other issues too; these are clearly not the only thing.) They have their uses, but should not be excessive at the expense of anything else. If they fail, then you won't do unless you know and have not destroyed the older possibility, and if they do not fail, then you may be trapped by them. You should not need to know what time it is to sit down to eat, or to wake up and to sleep, etc. |