Axil Axil <[email protected]> wrote:
> It’s one thing to recognize that the advance of technology continues to > grow more complex, making the task of the specialist who build and maintain > our systems more complicated still, but it’s quite another to recognize > that many of these systems are for most people actually *no longer > completely understandable*. > I agree. Except I would say that most ordinary people in the past did not understand how things work, and did not care much. Many people in 1860 had only a vague idea how steam engines work. I think most people in 1960 did not really grasp radio waves or television. However, engineers and scientists did understand these things. I think it is true that starting now, with cold fusion, we will have more and more technology which even a well-rounded technical expert does not understand in detail. Machines used to be easier to understand. You could see the component parts. When I first saw a mechanical automobile engine distributor, the design and purpose was immediately apparent to me. On the wall of my office I have a 1 kB RAM magnetic core RAM memory. Like this one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magnetic_core_memory_card.jpg The cores and wires threaded through them are just big enough to see. That was the last form of RAM which let you see the individual bits, and intuitively grasp how they worked. - Jed
