🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3083@j.cc.purdue.edu>, rsk@j.cc.purdue.edu (Wombat) writes:
> In article <937@mips.UUCP> hansen@mips.UUCP (Craig Hansen) writes:
> >.................. 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. 
> 
> Nonsense.  The technology we rely on fails...frequently.  If you happen
> to catch the first program in Burke's "Connections" series, where he
> discusses the New York blackout, and the consequences that would quite
> likely ensue if it continued for any length of time, you'll see a rather
> chilling scenario unfold.

I think I'm being quoted out of context and misinterpreted. What I mean here
is that "technology" doesn't disappear easily. Even the New York blackout
was a temporary affair, and the attention paid to the problem resulted in
significant improvements in the electrical distribution network. The folly
of man is not to be underestimated, but mercifully, the laws of nature have
been reasonably constant over the last few millenia.  The point is that even
a catastrophic event doesn't destroy the "technology matrix" - electricity
would still have been a well-known phenomenon even if the New York blackout
had (quite frankly, unimaginably) lasted for weeks.
-- 

Craig Hansen			|	 "Evahthun' tastes
MIPS Computer Systems		|	 bettah when it
...decwrl!mips!hansen		|	 sits on a RISC"