Future Shock

I've begun a tech and society class and read something interesting i'd like to share:

Quote:

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If the past 50,000 years of mans existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately 62 years each there have been about 800 such life times. Of these 800, fully 650 were spent in caves. Only during the last 70 lifetimes has it been possible to communicate effectively from one lifetime to another – as writing made possible to do. Only during the last 6 lifetimes did masses of men ever see a printed word. Only during the last 4 has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Only in the last 2 has anyone anywhere used an electric motor and the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we use in daily life today have been developed within the present, the 800th lifetime.
Page 14, Future Shock By: Alvin Toffler (1970)

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Yay first reply! It makes sense, have you seen the evolution of the world (namely life) equated to one year? Industrial revolution was like the last 2 seconds I think. It's somewhere in my ecology book.

-Cheers-

Humm never underestamate primative man, or the power of oral traditions..comunications from one life time to the next has been happening from the point we started comunicating...waht d oyou think the cave paintings are? Also note that there have been mechanical motors before (greeks in alaxandra had devloped a stam engin but where sacked before they could exploit it), batteries existed in babalon (no idea on what they where used for yet but they had chmical bateries.) and before the age of exploration there was no need for acurate time keeping (anyone remember when the chinese devloped the water clock?). Never get to full of our advanced tech or underestamate primitive man..we have made some advances this is ture but every step is bulit on the previous step.

I agree soewhat. Just because it didn't seem it be doing anything doesn't mean they aren't. They were busy evolving tool building skills and fire. The basics had to be done first. What's the use of a scienfic solar powered calculater if you don't understand what addition is? Ug.

I agree with the perspective. That being that man has only just begun to tap his knowledge and out of 50,000 years, only the last 70 lifetimes or (70*62) 4340 years that man has been able to effectively communicate beyond a generational lifetime. That would place civilization around the egyption time frame. Even their spectacular achievements have not been effectively communicated. For instance it was not until the last century (early 1900s) that someone was able to begin to read their legacy in printed sybmbols. We still don't know how the great structures of their time were built, though we speculate. In addition many discoveries had to be remade in the 15 and 16th centuries. So I think the time line is fairly accurate.

Cave painting do predict stories of events, like a hunt but if the people who taught and passed on knowledge in a tribe were killed, then knowledge was lost. The written word, in structure only happened in the last 4k years or so. If it exsists before that, we have no evidence of it as yet. Most of what was known in Alexandria was lost and re-invented with no prior knowledge of it's existence. If it was know, we would be much farther along the scientific evolutionary chain. (I think)

again you are minamiseing the worth of an oral history...the bards of the world passed on history, knoladge and tradition for millenia before the written word....lets also not minamise the advances of the anchient world; farming, refineing metal includeing steal eventualy.


The time period for writen communication also ignores the chinese who had writing an printing long before the west.

Hell what year was gilgamesh writen...io think your writeing number may be set too far ahead....

My point, I've never truested the futurists promoting the future shock theory...civilization is not going to end because we have more tech...actualy look at history, there isn't anything truly new, just refinements of new ideas. Hell we where a tail away from powered maned flight in the middle ages.

The Eqyptions invented paper thousands of years before the Chinese.

Ahh but writeing existed before paper, just ask the mesopotanians or celts or norse.

Sure we have neat new gadgates, but we are neither heading into a golden age or distruction...any more then past generations where in a golden age or at the edge of distruction.

But we didn't have writing. We had pictographs at best. Pictures that described real events. Writing in terms of syllabal and phonetics were the process of the Egyptions. I wrote a decent essay on the subject and brought together all threads of thought on this topic but I just hit paste instead of cut and it's gone. **** I am pissed. "The Ox sped down the road to the village" is significant over a picture of and Ox on a Road which is open to varying degree of interpretation.

This is true, but oral traditions where a great way to pass down knowladge, they just didn't travel well....writeing is at the start of the tech trea that leads to the internet(so far) allowing long distance comunications...not the retention of knowladge that would be language.