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Charthouse examines the human story through a series called In the Time of ... , for example, In the time of the Medieval English Mind and In the time of Matteo Ricci. Where needed, this series will be supplemented by maps. For example, Matteo Ricci's maps are especially appropriate because he made maps that contradicted his Chinese hosts' world view.
The Internet is the biggest thing since the .... printing press?
What is the price of progress? How many human lives are we willing to sacrifice to the convenience of the automobile?
At least the computer isn't killing people like cars. But it may well be a more disruptive technology.
GE is the only surviving member of the original Dow Jones.
Speaking of sacrifices, the world's five major religions today are also identified with four important men as well as the five major languages ranked by numbers of native speakers: Chinese, English Hindi, Spanish, Arabic. In chronological order:
Confucius
ChineseConfucianism
BuddhaHindiBuddhism,
Hinduism
JesusEnglish,
SpanishChristianity
MohammedArabicIslam
What caused what? Is the language popular because it got carried by the
religion? Or is the religion popular because it got carried by the language?
Do you see analogies to the Internet and the information revolution? If not, what perspective does that provide for your understanding of these changes?
After hearing two eyewitnesses tell about the same event, I begin to wonder about history.
John Brockman's "What Is The Most Important Invention In The Past Two Thousand Years?"
How is the Internet driving organizational change today in the context of what has driven organizational change for thousands of years?
Is the
Information Revolution Dead?
by W. Brian Arthur
Business 2.0, March 2002
If history is a guide, it is not.
At the peak of the Internet frenzy two years ago, when the Nasdaq was over 5,000
and dotcom millionaires were buying spreads in the hills above Palo Alto, it
seemed that the information revolution would go on forever. Little tech
companies were popping up everywhere, and small investors were reaping returns
that made them feel like geniuses. Then the bubble burst. It burst, management
guru Peter Drucker tells us, because "the information industry as a
business wasn't going anywhere." The information revolution had been hyped,
exaggerated. Neither computers nor the Internet, Drucker says, had added much to
the economy.
Is the information economy going nowhere? Is its revolution over? In Silicon
Valley, certainly, the prospects look bleak. But history suggests that such
pessimism is misplaced -- that the information revolution's best days might
actually lie ahead.
Business 2.0 Live! Transcript: Is the Information Revolution
Dead? Part
I | Part
II
by Business 2.0 Staff and W. Brian Arthur, Andy Grove, and Lawrence Lessig
Business 2.0, April 2002
[ get some quotes ]
history of tools
history of human communication / organizations
case studies: medicine
2000 B.C. - Here, eat this root.
1000 A.D. - That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer.
1850 A.D. - That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion.
1940 A.D. - That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill.
1985 A.D. - That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic.
2000 A.D. - That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root.
writing, books, and electric media
the motor, telephone, typewriter, and Internet
mathematics: Babylonian, Greek, and Incan
The alphabet (and its extension into typography) made
possible the spread of power that is knowledge, and shattered the bonds of
tribal man, thus exploding him into an agglomeration of individuals. Electric
writing and speed pour upon him, instantaneously and continuously, the concerns
of all other men. He becomes tribal once more. The human family becomes tribal
again.
-- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
is there cause and effect? Does anything cause anything? Example?
events such as wars and natural disasters
leaders
ideas
divine guidance
chance
inventions / tools
wheel, sail, lever,
scalability, extensibility
hunter-gatherer to agriculture to industry to what?
oral to written to printed to what?
The Great
Convergence
Forbes ASAP, Big Issue IV
The history
of buying and selling, from an eBay insider.
by Jeff Skoll
The Evolution of Wired Life
Out
of the past
By Sean M. Dugan
InfoWorld Electric, 1999
At a certain point in history, thanks to factors such as the society at large, the culture of the day, or the technology itself, something shifts. A fork in the road of progress appears, one that sends us in a new direction. Here are 20 of them.
The 1900 House
PBS, 2000
This four-part documentary "transports" an actual modern family from 1999 back to life in 1900. Public television viewers will have the chance to vicariously experience a time-travel journey back to everyday, middle-class life in Victorian London. The adventurous Bowler Family spent three months living in a townhouse carefully restored to reproduce the ambiance and amenities of the turn of the century. As a result, THE 1900 HOUSE explores the radical changes in family and domestic life that have occurred over the past 100 years through scientific and technological innovations.
List of inventions and their effects
The
millennium of the West
The Economist, December 25, 1999
(article "temporarily unavailable" as of February 2001)
Ten centuries have transformed mankind’s wealth, numbers, work, lifestyles, rights, literacy, communications and understanding of the world. A special issue on what has mattered most during the millennium.
learn more about disruptive technologies
Q&A:
Evan I. Schwartz
Author of "The Last Lone Inventor" talks about Philo T. Farnsworth and
the birth of television
by D.F. Tweney
SF Gate, June 13, 2002
Contrary to media hype and popular expectation, most inventions come from within the walls of large, moneyed companies, not from garages. As we move from the Web's first, "Wild West" days into an era of really big Internet business, the place to look for innovation is, most likely, with the big corporations.
The Last
Lone Inventor
by Evan I. Schwartz
American
Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm
by Thomas P. Hughes, 1989
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