[ih] How Plato Influenced the Internet

[John Day]

Agreed.  There are only so many ways to do something.  ;-)

> On Aug 23, 2021, at 14:46, Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net> wrote:
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> On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 8:12 AM John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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.
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> 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.
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> Craig 
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