"People" in the 19th century (1 Viewer)

[Long Ball Larry]

Why don't they get with the freakin program?  It's called an automobile, "people".  Much faster than a horse.

 

[tone1oc]

I think that most people didn't know about the automobile until the very tail end of the 19th century.  Those that were in the know were limited by high cost of production, high failure rates and lack of civic infrastructure to support an automobile, even if you did get your hands on one.   I'd imagine it would of been quite the liability trudging your modified steam engine  on bicycle tires through horse ruts just to save 5 minutes.  

 

[Long Ball Larry]

Certainly would of

 

[Despyzer]

This really grinds my gears!

 

[captain_amazing]

Did I mention the tank is a tank?

 

[Leeroy Jenkins]

I do not know how people survived pre-air conditioning. 

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

I think what gets me is the world before electricity. Largely it was a world of darkness compared to what we have now.

 

[RandyDB]

I think what gets me is the world before electricity. Largely it was a world of darkness compared to what we have now.

Just go to pre-internet or pre-cell phone, and people would feel they were in the dark ages.

 

[massraider]

It's called a bikini wax, Hello!

 

[Long Ball Larry]

I think what gets me is the world before electricity. Largely it was a world of darkness compared to what we have now.

The following comes to mind (apropos of very little, other than that I love the way it contextualizes things), because I happen to hear Kevin Kelly saying it on a podcast this morning.

That industrial revolution thing worked because it became invisible--we don't have the big motor turning everything; we have like 50 motors in our homes that became invisible. So, to some extent, this stuff is working because we don't see it. Because it's not something that is visible. And it succeeds to the extent that it transforms while we don't see it. So, that's one thing. And the second thing I would say about that is that, we're sitting on this huge wave of the First Industrial Revolution which brought this incredible prosperity to us all, the fact that we see around us that we no longer in the agricultural hunter-gatherer era were--we had to do everything with human muscle or with animal muscle, animal power. We invented something called 'synthetic artificial power.' And we harnessed fossil fuels, and carbon fuels, to give additional power that we couldn't do. And all that we see is basically a result of this artificial power. So when we drive down the road in your car, you have 250 horses working for you at that moment. Just turn a little knob, you've got 250 horses powering you down to do whatever you want to do. And then we distributed that power through a grid to every home and farm in the country; and so farmers could employ that artificial power to do all kinds of things; and factories could use that artificial power. And everything that we had built around us was because of the artificial power that we made. Well, now, we're going to do the same thing with artificial intelligence. So, instead of--in addition to having 250 horses driving you down the road, you are going to have 250 minds--which we are going to get from AI, from artificial intelligence. And that, we're also going to put that onto a grid and distribute it around the country so that like any farmer could justget and purchase as much artificial power and artificial intelligence as they want, to do things. And just as that artificial power, was this incredibly transformative, incredibly progressive, incredibly powerful platform to give us all that we enjoy now, this artificial minds that we are going to get on top of the artificial power is going to transform us in an equal way: it's going to touch everything that we do. And I think actually it will transform us more than that first Industrial Revolution did.