Modern Electronics (was Re: List charter mods & headcount... ;

From: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf_at_siconic.com>
Date: Sun Jun 20 21:01:00 2004

On Sun, 20 Jun 2004, David V. Corbin wrote:

> >Does it matter that some knowledge is lost as generations go on?
>
> I think it does matter. Thinking "Those who forget the past are doomed to
> repeat it".

Are we really "doomed" to re-invent the vacuum tube? ;)

> There were many "errors" made during the development phase of
> each earlier generation technology. People learned from these mistakes and
> finally made a workable technology for their generation. If the information
> is truly lost, then time/effort/etc will again be wasted. In some case this
> waste may incude enough overhead to cause perfectly good ideas to be
> abandoned just before "the breakthrough".

Again, I'm thinking in terms of vacuum tubes, and I can't see how losing
the knowledge of how they worked is going to affect the future, or even
the present for that matter. We're so beyond them technologically that
they are irrelevant today.

If we knew we were going to be plunged into another Dark Age (becoming
likelier every day at the rate things are going) and somehow all knowledge
subsequent to when vacuum tubes were state of the art is going to be lost
then sure, I can see how teaching vacuum tube theory would be useful.
But, as pessimistic as I am about humanity right now (or at least the
future of the US) I don't think it's very realistic to assume this will
happen.

We still have historical records of how they were made. We still have
(with some glaring holes) historical records of how all manner of
technology for the past 5000 years has been accomplished, and we can
re-learn and resconstruct old technology as we wish (mainly for hobby, but
there are examples of utility, though rare).

It would be neat to know how the Egyptians built the pyramids, but we have
cranes and stuff for that today, so even if we knew their methods, is it
really practical to teach them in engineering school?

So one question might be: do we really need to overload EE students with
theory about vacuum tubes when they'll probably never use them, much less
come across them in the real world today? Or is it sufficient to have
historical records on file for posterity?

> I am remembering a book I read many years ago [can't place the title or
> author right now, but it may have been a "short" by Isaac Asimov]. The basic
> premise was:
>
> 1) Information was being lost, so a special class of people were set up to
> be caretakers [it was a high honor]
> 2) Time passed, knowledge grew, the caretakers grew, until there were more
> caretakers and "regular" people.
> 3) Civilization began to depend totally on the caretakers, who specialized
> in "old" knowledge.
> 4) Civilization became stagnant
>
> Alas, perhaps it is necessary for information to become lost.......

It's called "progress".

> [Not even pretending to know the answer to this one]

Me niether, but I think I have a good idea as to what it is :)

-- 
Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers   ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com  || at http://marketplace.vintage.org  ]
Received on Sun Jun 20 2004 - 21:01:00 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:36:59 BST