[HN Gopher] From Steam to Silicon: Patterns of Technological Rev...
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       From Steam to Silicon: Patterns of Technological Revolutions
        
       Author : hbartab
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2025-06-04 14:50 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ianreppel.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ianreppel.org)
        
       | andsoitis wrote:
       | > In the table below, I have summarized the pattern for the
       | agricultural, financial, and four industrial revolutions
       | 
       | When you zoom out further, you might mark humankind's progress a
       | little differently like Yuval Harari does in _Sapiens_ :
       | 
       | 1. Cognitive Revolution (~70,000 years ago)                 *
       | Rise of abstract thinking and complex language            *
       | Enabled shared myths and large-scale cooperation
       | 
       | 2. Agricultural Revolution (~10,000 years ago)                 *
       | Shift from foraging to farming            * Led to food
       | surpluses, social hierarchies, and sedentary life
       | 
       | 3. Unification of Humankind (last few thousand years)
       | * Formation of empires,
       | 
       | global religions, and trade networks                 * Created
       | large-scale political and cultural systems
       | 
       | 4. Scientific Revolution (~500 years ago)                 * Birth
       | of modern science and empirical inquiry            * Fueled
       | technological progress, capitalism, and global dominance
        
       | therobot24 wrote:
       | I think the writer should have also taken a moment to reflect on
       | the underlying _need_ that led to these revolutions. Each need is
       | implicit to what's discussed in the table, but would be useful to
       | help frame the discussion of the underlying questions that are
       | discussed. For instance, going from IR3 -> IR4 created a _need_
       | of information management, where Google was the first major
       | player in providing search as that means, now agents are taking
       | the role of search & retrieval as a single action.
        
       | monknomo wrote:
       | An interesting thing to look at is the result of different
       | revolutions on the people that were displaced
       | 
       | Here's an interesting example:
       | https://journals.uwyo.edu/index.php/workingclassstudies/arti...
        
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       (page generated 2025-06-04 23:01 UTC)