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To: ReignOfError

On your desk then it’s the functions of a computer (goes back to the 50s) connected to the internet (goes back to the 60s). Is that new? I was playing Adventure (pre-cursor to Zork) on the dumb terminal my dad had in his home so he could what we now call telecommute in late 70s. A lot of this stuff isn’t nearly as new as folks think, the interface is new, the speed is new, the convenience is new, the percentage of people that can do it is new, the concept and general ability is nowhere near new.


104 posted on 05/04/2012 10:59:28 AM PDT by discostu (I did it 35 minutes ago)
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To: discostu

That’s my point: Your definition of “new” is so narrow that you’re defining that dumb terminal and a modern computer with broadband as the same basic “concept and general ability.” All of the changes between the two, which have radically changed the lives of most people living in the industrialized world, aren’t new.

If you want to be that reductionist, the smartphone wasn’t really new — it’s just a PDA with a phone built in (the first marginally successful smartphones ran PalmOS). The MP3 player wasn’t new, because all it did was replace a spinning optical disk with flash memory; portable digital music wasn’t new.


105 posted on 05/04/2012 6:15:17 PM PDT by ReignOfError
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