Antique Memes Roadshow

What? In our lives we have decoded the entire human genome. Half a million people live today that wouldn't if cancer research stopped.

The internet was created and literally connected the entire world and almost all its knowledge together.

You have a computer in your pocket that would have been the size of Texas 4 decades ago -- Transistor tech growth alone is absolutely remarkable.

Now, GPT4/AI has made it so ANY human with an internet connection can have access to a world class tutor on any subject. Think about the 150 million Indians that live below the UN poverty line and the opportunities that provides them and thus enriches the world's potential outputs.

If you want a read on how the world isn't actually getting as bad we as all read about, in totality, (I think our western institutions being corrupted and dying is another story), read this book -- https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570

While accurate, if feels disingenuous to frame it like this. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not disputing the rapid increase in technology following the industrial revolution, but there were many incremental advances over the centuries before that led to those moments. We didn't just begin to do things in the air in the 1900s.

As early as 969 or as late as 1264 rocketry was used to propel things through the air.

The dating of the invention of the first rocket, otherwise known as the gunpowder propelled fire arrow, is disputed. The History of Song attributes the invention to two different people at different times, Feng Zhisheng in 969 and Tang Fu in 1000. However Joseph Needham argues that rockets could not have existed before the 12th century, since the gunpowder formulas listed in the Wujing Zongyao are not suitable as rocket propellant.

Rockets may have been used as early as 1232, when reports appeared describing fire arrows and 'iron pots' that could be heard for 5 leagues (25 km, or 15 miles) when they exploded upon impact, causing devastation for a radius of 600 meters (2,000 feet), apparently due to shrapnel. A "flying fire-lance" that had re-usable barrels was also mentioned to have been used by the Jin dynasty (1115–1234). Rockets are recorded to have been used by the Song navy in a military exercise dated to 1245. Internal-combustion rocket propulsion is mentioned in a reference to 1264, recording that the 'ground-rat,' a type of firework, had frightened the Empress-Mother Gongsheng at a feast held in her honor by her son the Emperor Lizong.

Link

In 1783 we were able to manage what I would call air travel. Flight is a bit of a loaded term but I think most would agree that this is flight despite being lighter than air.

The first untethered manned hot air balloon flight was performed by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes on November 21, 1783, in Paris, France

Link

In 1849 a heavier than air glider was invented. Pinning this down seems tricky. There are multiple accounts of folks earlier doing it. I think the problem is where do you draw the line between jumping while holding "wings" and actually gliding. Regardless, this predates 1903.

The first heavier-than-air (i.e. non-balloon) man-carrying aircraft that were based on published scientific principles were Sir George Cayley's series of gliders which achieved brief wing-borne hops from around 1849.

Link

Framing it as flight in 1903 to the moon in 1969 ignores a significant chunk of the histories of both air travel and rocketry.

Honestly, the smartphones feel like the last big innovation we've had. What's really changed since smartphones have settled into what they are now? What new technology has had such an impact on the world?

I don't know, feels like the world has settled for a while and that we're not doing anything cool anymore, especially as the internet falls into the corporate soulless garbage it's becoming.

Maybe the Artemis program will instill that sense of progress back into us.

Let's compare NASA engineer's salary to a engineer at Raytheon or Boeing's.

A lot of people that could have been rocket scientists went to work for wall street.