[ih] How Plato Influenced the Internet

[Craig Partridge]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 8:12 AM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> It is not uncommon in the history of technology (it has been observed back
> several centuries) that it isn’t so much direct transfer of technology but
> more someone brings back a story along the lines of, ‘I saw this thing that
> did thus and so and kind of looks like t.’ Which gives someone the idea,
> that if it exists, then how it must work like this.’ It isn’t quite
> independent invention, but it isn’t quite direct influence either.
>
>
>
Related comment -- from my various interactions with historians about
technology history.  If the available technology is limited (as it was in
the 1950s/60s/70s and early 1980s in many dimensions) then your solutions
to certain problems are going to look rather similar.  That doesn't meant
that two similar solutions influenced each other... The trick in writing
tech history is figuring out where there was a choice space and where there
wasn't (much of) one.

Craig


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