Quote:
Originally Posted by AstroGuy
If you take a household from 1911 and compare it to one exactly the same as today minus the computer, only difference is the computer.
You can perform the comparison at any part of the living condition spectrum and the difference will always be the computer. This is the achievement of man in 100 years. But look at the price we paid to have it in our homes, and was it worth it?
It is a little confusing, if you compare a household of 1911 against one of equal caliber of today, the difference is the computer.
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Personally, I'll take the drug cabinet as the biggest difference. Computers are great tools but antibiotics have saved a huge number of lives. The amount of effort (money and time) invested in computing research as a share of the total amount of research and development across all areas is actually very small. Computers are important tools, crucial for some things, but I disagree that they are
"...the achievement of man in 100 years." You've been given several other examples but you've waved them off because something sort of similar but often
not functionally equivalent existed a century ago. If you want to play that game then scratch the computer too since slide rules date from the 17th century and they are kinda, sorta, almost, about the same and my great grandfather had one in his house a century ago. He didn't know how to use it - and I cannot remember how to any more either - but he had one! I guess that means we've gone nowhere during the last one hundred years.
