Technology is knowledge, it doesn’t have to be in actual use to have the potential for usefulness, and if it does have any use at all, that potential seems unlikely to disappear. To actually go extinct it would have to somehow disappear from the body of all human information. But then, how would we know that it had ever existed?
I’m sure there are such things that have been lost - ancient tribal cultures’ never-written knowledge about ways to use and manipulate local resources surely include many things that have been lost forever. But once that knowledge is recorded in a fixed medium, I don’t see how you can ever say it’s “extinct”, even if not currently in direct use… It’s having once existed gives it the potential for rebirth, or at least for evolution and merging into something else useful. Has anybody done a “tree” of human technology showing that sort of evolution? I think it would be fascinating, but of course also terribly complex.
Posted by Arthur Smith on August 1, 2008 at 8:44 AMspeaking of punch cards, have you seen any evidence of Hollerith-style punch cards still in use?
Posted by Jes5199 on July 23, 2008 at 2:40 PMimpressive looms.
Comparing old school technology like this to ‘new school’ technology of, say, a hosting centre, why is it that the old stuff looks so much more impressive than a lots of gray racks with gray boxes with gray cables and some blinking lights?
-E
Posted by Erwin on July 22, 2008 at 2:46 PMThe traditional looms used to weave silk cloth in he town of Kancheepuram, South India, still use punched cards. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2374/2508127858_2b540f8642.jpg?v=0
Posted by Ramki on July 21, 2008 at 5:53 PM
Type the characters you see in the picture above.
Regarding the comment about Hollerith punch-card systems still in use, try Cardamation Corporation http://www.cardamation.com/.
They are still quite happy to sell you cards, card-punch, reader, sorter, collator, etc.
Posted by Micheal H. McCabe on August 14, 2008 at 7:15 AM