On Tuesday, August 20, 2019 at 11:33:33 PM UTC+1, Eric Stevens wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Aug 2019 00:19:58 +1000, SolomonW <Solo...@citi.com>
> wrote:
> >Here is a science fiction story which I read many years ago.
> >
> >It is of an alien race that knew all science. They built a supercomputer
> >and programmed it so that anyone that had a science question could ask this
> >supercomputer a question on science and it would give the answer. Sonn
> >after the alien race disappeared.
> >
> >Long after some humans went to the supercomputer to ask it some science
> >questions, they asked the questions, and the supercomputer answered. The
> >computer made it clear that their problems made no sense or sometimes its
> >answers made no sense. The humans tried again to ask more questions, and
> >again, the answers made no sense.
> >
> >Finally, the humans decided that the problem was that to understand the
> >answer, you needed to know much of the answer already. So they left in
> >frustration none the wiser.
> >
> >I have often wondered if I was magically teleported 2500 years back and was
> >in either the academy of Athens or Jerusalem and tried to answer their
> >questions on science would I be faced with a similar situation?
> >
> >Any thoughts.
> I have had thoughts along parallel lines. Way back in the 1970s I
> bought one of the first HP25 programmable calculators. I found it a
> wonderful device for speeding up moderately complicated calculations
> and it occurred to me that the outcome of the second world war might
> have been different had Nazi Germany been given the technology back in
> the 1930s. But then it further occurred to me they would not have been
> able to learn anything much from it. For a start they didn't have the
> technology to detect the trace elements which make transistors work.
> They wouldnt even have thought of looking for such minute quantities
> of trace elements. But even if they had found them, they lacked the
> technology to make suitable silicon crystals or create the masks
> required to etch the circuitry required to make it work.
>
> So much of our knowledge in any particular field depends on quite
> different knowledge in an apparently unconnected field with the result
> that science and technology advances over a wave front rather than
> dashes from point to point.
>
> I see that now computing devices are on the verge of advancing into 5
> nanometer technology. Twenty years ago this would have been a science
> fiction pipe dream. I wonder what is coming next?
>
> --
>
>
> Eric Stevens
>
> There are two classes of people. Those who divide people into
> two classes and those who don't. I belong to the second class.

My parents, who witnessed their first cars and planes and then saw space flight, are example enough!