Michael Cain

Comment Threads

• scott-sanford commented on Crib sheet: Accelerando
  The one singularity I know we, as a species, had is the invention of language. Yes, this. It's the one true big-S Singularity that we can point to in history; you really can't explain it to anyone on the other side, you can at best bring them over to the more advanced side and let them experience it. We've had plenty of small-s singularities, some of them driven by technological invention; the Gutenberg printing press is a common example. Technical changes such as the industrial revolution and the invention of agriculture led to spectacular social changes, which the people at...
• scentofviolets commented on Crib sheet: Accelerando
  If you're going for the Big S rather than the little s, surely writing gets a mention as well, right?...
• zhochaka commented on Crib sheet: Accelerando
  While the singularity-nature of Gutenberg is arguable, it's more than just a replacement for a large number of monks. The medieval world was developing machines. It was coming up with ways of making goods more efficiently (The Arsenal at Venice). But the printing press moved the whole game into the world of thought. It's not just a better loom, a way of making more of something tangible. It wasn't something you couldn't have explained to Chaucer. "We have a machine which, once set up, can make a large number of identical copies of a piece of text. The cost per...
• GoCaptain commented on Crib sheet: Accelerando
  'But would he see the implications for literacy?' I'm not sure people saw the implications for literacy until well after the advent of printing, possibly not until the nineteenth century. The subversive possibilities were grasped pretty quickly though....
• guthrie commented on Crib sheet: Accelerando
  Re. plants and CO2, the important caveat needs to be added, 'if all other variables are kept the same', so yes CO2 leads to more biomass, albeit of the unhelpful kind, but only if there's still enough rain, fertilisers, soil and the right temperatures at the right time. SO the effect in the real world is much lower than in trials. I just thought i'd put that in in case anyone got the wrong idea....