Did you find this year’s new technology presented at CES boring? The Antikythera device has been described as being so sophisticated for a 2100 year old machine that it’s discovery 100 years ago was like discovering a functioning Buick in the middle ages. Recent technological advances in 3D imaging have allowed us to see that that may be putting it mildly.
holy sheet! incredible minds!!!
Humans have always been clever little simians. Only recently has technology started to reach the masses. Before, it was considered magical treasure or magical knowledge. Magicians (the scientists of old) were among the very few with access to the culture’s accumulated written knowledge. Kings used the knowledge of the magicians to enhance and extend their authority.
So, it’s not really that surprising if you check out the Greek’s technological history.
I’m sure Nature will find a hockey stick dial on this device that proves AGW. It’s the science.
Yes and yet we still had the dark ages. I fear geeks of any time period can’t overcome be the inherent stupidity of the rest of the species.
durn the first video isnt available at this time.. waaaaaa!
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Fantastic.
I wonder if HP expected to help their sales figures by doing this work. Alas, the harm done to HP’s reputation by Carly Fiorina is permanent as far as I’m concerned. She’s an ass who doesn’t want the USA to have a middle class.
If things had happened just a bit differently. Although the idea of the Roman Empire having jet aircraft, electronics and atomic weapons by the Sixth or Seventh Century A.D. is kind of scary.
The lesson ought to be that history doesn’t necessarily have to fit our linear schema; that it’s a chaotic system that proceeds with fits and starts and all sorts of retrogressions.
Just look at the intelligence of people on the internet if you’re wondering whether everything progresses forward in a straight line or whether it goes in all sorts of directions.
@#7
Why? If that was the case you would probably be Roman today and therefore you would have been brain washed from birth by the Roman rhetoric just like any country you grow up in today.
I’m sure the Apple version (to be announced later this month) will be vastly superior.
We’re giving too much credit to the Greeks. Greek Math, Science etc comes from the Egyptians. Greeks were students of Egyptian knowledge and culture.
This, and other marvels depress me. Look at the pyramids, the Panama Canal. The Golden Gate bridge was built in 4.5 years. The US designed, tested, and used atomic weapons in just about 3 years. Hell, WWII only lasted about 5 years. The US sent men to the moon in the 1960′s.
We are now coming up on 9 years since 9/11. The WTC towers site is still pretty much nothing. We are no closer to having universal health care. We are still in Iraq. Afghanistan is still the shithole it was in 2001.
I feel like we have somehow come to a screeching halt and are now sliding backwards into a new dark ages. There is lots of bickering, but nothing gets done.
sad.
#11. what utter rubbish! With few exceptions Greek logic, mathematics, reasoning and strategy were wholly original, the Athens schools of philosophy are still studied today in scientific and commercial ethics and law, almost all of modern philosophical thinking and critique is built upon it, we still use Pi if I’m not mistaken. Egypt’s influence over Greece was minimal, Greece’s influence over Rome, Renaissance Europe and the modern ages of Man are profound.
Egypt’s influence over Greece wasn’t “minimal”. Much of the cosmological and spiritual thought of the Greeks was borrowed from the Egyptians. However, it is true that it is the Greek concept of logos, the unity of math, logic, and philosophy it represents, is at the bottom of what is today considered Western thought.
#14. You had to mention Greek bottoms, didn’t you?
There’s something to be said for Egyptian bottoms, too.
I think it was an Asian kid, did they have exchange students back then?
do you think crap talk like that lets you get on the net
The Middle ages were only dark for the common european man.
If we, in the west, would only take off our eurocentric glasses we would realise that.
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So, after watching for FIFTEEN minutes they finally tell us what the damn thing actually does!
What a waste of time. Its still impressive, but so long winded that I quickly lost interest.