> Had this really not been done before? Apparently not on land. Ferries are an ancient idea, both for crossing water bodies and for traveling along them. They are fixed routes, of course, but that’s mostly because the shore is fixed.

Historically, not true for the “trekschuit” in 1632. For that, the shore didn’t exist before the route was envisioned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekschuit:

“The first trekschuit 'sailed' in 1632 between Amsterdam and Haarlem and could carry 30 passengers. The trekvaart or canal was dug in a straight line to facilitate an easy pulling process and to guarantee the shortest route”

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brnt 5 hours ago | parent [-]

My late grandmother once told me this is how she travelled longer distances on occasion as a youth/young woman. Was a good lesson for me in understanding exactly how much she had seen the world change in her lifetime.

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rationalist 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Just imagine how much we will see change in our lifetimes.

For some of us; that's dial-up, to AI, to who knows what.

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bloak 2 hours ago | parent [-]

We don't know yet, of course, but I have the impression that the century in which things changed most was the century from about 1865 to about 1965. Stuff seems to have slowed down a bit since then. But it's all subjective, really: it depends on what you think is important.

	▲	brnt 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		1969 is a big year due to man landing on the moon. Cars becoming ubiquitous (they certainly were a luxury item well into the sixties here). 1970s gave us the integrated circuit and arguably the start of modern computing. 1980s the collapse of the Soviet Union, genetic research. 1990s: well, I can go on :P