🚀 go-pugleaf

> 
> >.................. but the nice thing about technology is that even the bits
> >of it that you don't understand will keep working the same way forever. 
> 
> That's a long time,isn't it? Should we really have so much faith in our
> inventions? 

Well, the historic record has shown a few losses.  It was just recently
that someone finally figured out how to make Damascus steel.  We no longer
know how to make concrete that is as stable as some of the stuff used to
build the Roman roads, and is still good after a couple millenia.  There
are probably some historians around who will add to the list (hint).

It has been observed that a culture is only as old as its oldest member.
Technology only exists, in any usable sense, if we have people who can
understand it.  It would be very easy to lose a lot of things.

Consider, for example, the growing disaster in math and science education
in the American public school system.  We are in serious danger of having
a population that is mostly ignorant couch potatoes, and a few (mostly
foreign-born) inner-motivated individuals who have learned math on their
own despite the schools.  This may soon have a big impact on what sort
of technology we can support.

There was a curious example of technology loss back during the Vietnam
years.  One of the Viet Cong's effective techniques was to make crossbows
out of non-metallic materials.  Thus armed, they could sneak up close to
areas 'protected' by electronic surveillance.  At close range, it turns
out that a good crossbow is often a more dangerous weapon than most guns.  
Modern military people tend to sneer, of course, which only added to the 
vulnerability of a lot of soldiers.  [This is really an example of arrogance
rather than technological loss.]

Oh, yes, another loss:  Back in the 40's and early 50's, we had high-school
biology texts that did a reasonably good job of introducing the concept of
evolution; religious pressure caused the publishers to eliminate this part
of the texts.  Now we have a population that thinks that it is reasonable
to debate whether "scientific creationism" should be taught in schools.
The very fact that they can get away with using such a phrase and not be
laughed out of the room is evidence of how much we have lost on this front.
Among the results are the current malaria epidemic throughout the tropics;
you can probably add your own entries to a list of biological problems due
to a general failure to understand the mechanisms of evolution.

As for technology working forever, well, antibiotics and pesticides don't.

-- 
	John M Chambers			Phone: 617/364-2000x7304
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