[ExI] Thanksgiving

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
Subject: [ExI] Thanksgiving

 

Dear chat group:

 

>…If there were a competition for being thankful, I think I must win it… bill w

 

 

Silver medal at best sir, for surely I am thankfuller than thou.  Life in our world today does not suck.  We have enough food, we have homes, things are going well for humanity in our fortunate times.

 

Since we are generally technology fans here but not followers of any particular deity, now is a good time to thank technology for the good things that make our lives not suck.  Technology is great: you don’t need to pray to it, you don’t need to give it money (well, I suppose that depends on how you look at it (I have given plenty for computers over the years (but oh they have given back a thousand-fold.)))

 

I have looked back over the years and identified what I think are the most important developments which were the punctuation in the equilibrium, developments which caused a chain reaction in cool stuff.  I don’t include stuff before my time, such as the communications tech which developed during the war.

 

I have these: 

 

1.           Commercially viable computers, which I will kinda arbitrarily assign to Apple computer, about 1977.

2.         HTML, which enabled the modern internet as we know it with websites and links and all the cool stuff on there, about 1993

3.         Cell phone technology, which reached inflection point around 2000 or so.

 

Those are the three biggies in my lifetime, and ja I know they are debatable, but since we are in a festival of thanksgiving, do share please with this tech-oriented group what developments rocked your world and which ones you anticipate soon.

 

I am tempted to add Zoom to that list, because I have discovered how that one seemingly minor development is the key to open a hundred doors.  Now I can pull together meetings with students and do software efforts without ever having to suffer their actual presence (ewww, teenagers, take me away Calgon (but if I hafta work with them for half an hour on the computer they are most tolerable (and highly productive (fine example available on request.)))))

 

Let’s hear it please.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

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