What held us back, technologically, for so long??

reply to post by KJV1611


You actually worship someone who would commit such an atrocity?

reply to post by chr0naut

The only thing, and only race that propelled humans forward to this day and age was the Germans. So thank the Germans.

Electricity happened

Originally posted by agentofchaos
you think we're advanced? If we were advanced we wouldn't s*** where we eat...
deuces

Some of us don't.

Originally posted by KJV1611
reply to post by chr0naut

 

God held it back:

DANIEL 12
4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and KNOWLEDGE shall be increased.

Think about it, our new tech is the worst thing that has happened to us humans. We were much better off without it.

Now that the end of the world is fast approaching, God released the flood gates of knowledge so we could kill our self that much more efficiently. Don't believe me? Stick around a few more years....wait till you see what the near future has in store.

I think that this is a totally valid answer from a Christian perspective but I was thinking of a more mechanistic reason.

However, if everyone fails to find that 'more mechanistic' reason, this will come to the forefront as an answer.

Personal opinion?
Religion as some users here mentioned. It divides humanity =divided minds

The other would be knowledge hogging by those in power aka the rich. Even today, there is technology we have yet to hear off locked up in a vault, and who knows how long its been in there.

Originally posted by OrphenFire
reply to post by KJV1611

 

You actually worship someone who would commit such an atrocity?

Would it be an atrocity to give a small child a loaded revolver?

It all depends upon perspective.

Some of the military uses of technology are absolutely frightening, even for one who has been involved in the science of WMD's.

Imagine the Huns vs the Romans with CX gas and weaponized Bubonic Plague bio-weapons.

Thank God for His restraint.

"...I don't mean to bash your post but you are dead wrong for the wrong reason because religion, or rather the Bible, has been mentioning the End Days since it was first written mega years ago.
Of course the End Days can be identified as the Age of Increased Knowledge, which is what this topic is all about..."





You answer is absolutely correct, and I am not even a religious man.
I don't think that many people here understood how BIG this is. You have put it so well in only two short sentences.

It seems to me most of the advances were made in between 1910-1960. I know now there are computers and cell phones but if you look at life the huge leaps were in this time period. If you took some from 1910 and brought them to 1960, their lifestyle change would be more dramatic than from 1960 to 2010.

The space program is a good example, we really haven't done too much since the 1960's.

I think people like Tesla delivered information to move us along.

It's not really as mysterious as it seems. Each technological revolution makes the next one easier to achieve. So, logically, the first one would take a really, really long time, then each successive breakthrough took less time than the last.

We had Tesla 100 years ago and he gave us the technology that we may have in 2100. That is 200 years leap.
How come we are still at the piston engine level?

Now, in last century the church can't be blamed.
Blame it on oil?
Hum.... nope! Too easy.

Blame it on our time limit on this Earth!
Sir Isaac Newton discovered our time limit is 2060! Believe it or not.

I apologize in advance for the long post. I have had many a discussion about this. The number one contribution to our technology is education. Education and the ability to read have directly resulted in what we have today. Religion and lack of education is what held back our innovation. Once a populace learns to read, they want to learn more.

I like to use this example:

Prior to the internet, telephone, TV, and other things I will call instant communication, The only way to hear news was by horseback. You had to wait. By the time you found out about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, you didn't really care as the news was probably weeks old.

Flash forward to today; A person cannot fart in a room in Hong Kong without it making the web near immediately. It is my belief that most of these "natural disasters" that everyone gets upset about have always happened there was just no way to know about it. The stress in our youth is amazing. but I digress soberly...

That leads me to this: The next wave on understanding will happen when the people as a group grow-up and realize just how much of their life is out of their control. When they realize the Technology that has yet to come....

Energy science is still young. if i was to equate it to a lifetime, I would say Energy science is about 5 minutes old. Realize our government and people argue over a better way to boil water; coal, Nat gas, or nuclear. There's got to be a better way.

Material Sciences is still an infant as well. Organic chemistry is one of the oldest branches of the sciences. Organic as in the study of carbon. Yet, it is only in the most recent years that we have discovered Graphene, Buckyballs, and other constructs of carbon. Lithium, discovered in early 1800s, wasn't even considers as an electrical anode till the late 20th century.

Just between energy and materials, we haven't seen anything yet.

The internet was invented so scientist could collaborate in realtime. (yes, most of you only know about port 80) Do you really think computer processing power has grown so much just to make games look nicer? There are very few places I know that can use all the computing power they can get; pharmaceuticals and materials.

Think of it this way: Prior to the internet, I had to publish in a journal (takes about a year), wait for someone to read it, contact me about it, or , more likely, wait for them to publish back. (It was like arguing via the classifieds delivered by horseback.) Now, we can all contact each other in near realtime email. We can send documents, proof, ideas. Suddenly, the fruits of our work will be seen in our lifetime.

Enough rambling, I apologize again. I leave you with this: Every generation since Jesus believes at one point or another that they are the last generation on the earth. They have all been wrong so far. If they would only realize the belief itself is irrelevant we could move on to greater things....

Fundamentalist Thinking...including religion was and always will be the millstone around our necks.

clinging to tradition is a close 2nd

reply to post by chr0naut


Well the answer is quite complex....there are many factors to consider. The biggest in my opinion is the ease in which new ideas can be shared, with the invention of the printing press....the rise of regular inter continental trade, etc. The more new ideas get passed around, the more we all benifit, and the faster technology grows...No one could have invented the computer without understanding the basics of how electricity works...or the manufacturing technology of printing circuit boards....Etc. etc.

Most of the inventions we have today are interdependant upon multitudes of other lesser inventions. To keep going on with the example of the computer.....Simple mechanical computers based on gears and springs, using no electricity were made quite early on....Heck we've known about electricity almost since the begining of human civilization! Remember the Bahgdad Battery?
Other examples of early electricity would be the quartz crystal shakers of American Indians that would light up due to piezoelectric effect. You can find some reproductions here

People were just as bright back then, as they are today (for instance look at the advanced mathematics and architecture of the Mayans).....It simply took a lot of time, for these various cultures to collide, and then more time for systems of trade to allow for the sharing of ideas....so that various simple inventions and discoveries could be combined into greater ones.

Also there are countless other variables.....From the simple increase in the amount of people (a very small percentage of us are true inventive geniuses....the more people you have, the more geniuses you produce), as well as things like politics, or religious organizations hindering science.

Originally posted by chr0naut
Humans have been around for ages (3 million or more years according to current Science) and yet it is only in the last 100 or so years that we have progressed from horse & cart to the Internet & Space.

The start of the upward spike of the application of knowledge could have occurred anywhere, (ancient India, China, the Middle East or Greece), at any time but it seemed to come mainly from Europe and only a few decades ago.

So, what was it? Or conversely, what propelled us forward?

It all started in the fertile crescent with a little event called...

THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

From there... humans began to practice totalitarian agriculture in a small area of the middle-east (modern day Iraq... coincidentally). Massive surpluses of starchy/high-energy/low-nutrient crops were created, this lead to an overall reduction in human health (up until modern medicine around 100-200 years ago) but a MASSIVE BOOM in human populations that has only grown EXPONENTIALLY, rather than gradually (as in prehistoric times of hunter-gatherer/tribal societies). More people means more food is needed, thus more surplus, and the vicious cycle repeated itself. With more than a couple hundred people comes the "need" for hierarchy, chiefdoms, governments/nation-states, specialization, money, markets, ownership/property, expansion, conquest, technological explosion, codified law, mass religion, and so on. All of this accelerated the pace of technological advancement (as a society). However, most INDIVIDUALS within our society are increasingly unable to repair, reproduce, or understand the tools/products/technology we use/witness. Hunter-gatherers, on the other hand, had very advanced technology FOR THEIR TIME. That is to say... MOST if not ALL of them knew how to take raw materials from the natural environment and fashion them into highly effective tools for their day to day lives. Most of us have LOST this knowledge and can (sadly) hardly survive in even the most abundant wilderness. In fact, a "primitive" obsidian blade is sharper than a modern surgeon's scalpel. It's a matter of perspective really. As individuals, most of us are more primitive in knowledge/know-how/skill/ability than hunter-gatherers. However, as a society, we are in the realm of virtual MAGIC compared to the overall technology of hunter-gatherers.

At the end of the day, it can be very well-argued that this was the biggest mistake in human history... CIVILIZATION:


The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race



OH! And READ THIS BOOK!!!!


ISHMAEL by Daniel Quinn (full/free PDF copy)

Originally posted by zerotime
Religion held us back. And I'm not bashing religion just stating a fact. Religion is still fighting science tooth and nail on any modern advances.

edit on 14-3-2012 by zerotime because: (no reason given)

Originally posted by xavi1000
RELIGION

and she is continue to holding us back ...

Such comment like this makes this thread less interesting and biased. I think that such people who say so are stopping this civilization the most. Religions have nothing to do or even help that progress. When the great religions appear thousands years ago our civilization on this planet start its own progress.

What stops our civilization in my opinion are people who blame religion and blame others for everything instead of taking care how their own life looks like.

In my opinion, through my research, technology has always been around. We just don't comprehend technology if it is not understood by our physics of our modern reality, many mysteries around the world are yet to be fully understood how they came to be because its technology that comes from outer this world and brought here with special knowledge given to selected few and lost in history through u know who??

As previously stated↓

Originally posted by BrokenCircles

[color=FF8E38]The title of this thread, is a question. I have given my answer, clearly. If you want to disagree with my actual answer, then I will be happy to discuss it.

reply to post by petrus4

Obviously, your goal is none other than to get involved in a heated discussion.

I am not in the mood to debate irrelevant off-topic nonsense with you.

Originally posted by petrus4

Even if I had done that, is that a crime?

No, but irrelevant ignorance should be.

[color=D7FF54]Since you are incapable of addressing my actual answer to the topic of this thread, I have nothing more to say to you. I will not even bother reading your next reply.

reply to post by chr0naut


How do you know that we did not have technology in the past...

the thing that drove us forward is not aliens or anything , it was the power of human imagination , we are a species who given time can create wonderful things . Much in the way an artist would render a person using clay
a person who is handy with tools can craft many things useful for making our lives easier.

Human imagination was the only driving force behind our technological explosion as we made our survival much easier , we had time to think more and think freely as we were not burdened by the need to survive , as some smart human before us made that challenge a little more easier with a tool or device.

the book by Eric K Drexler - engines of creation

that guy had some interesting ideas about how nanotechnology will revolutionise human existence.
to the point where the boundary between man and machine is so blurred we cannot tell the difference

transhumanism is the next step in our evolution , to become immortal , to find the way to upload the human consciousness into a downloadable format to install into a cyborg body . the collective consciousness of every human afterwards , our entire knowledge stored digitally in a vast and infinite network.

ghost in the shell - masamune shirow