parallel inventions in the 15th and 20th century:
- books (printed through the printing press) spread knowledge just like the internet does, allowing a facilitated and drastically accelerated exchange of ideas
- new transport methods allow new lands to be reached and new worlds to be explored. i wonder whether it is an accident that "spaceships" are called after ships
6 Comments
thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe · 9 pts · 1y
TL;DR meme is wrong. It's not the communication of information but the invention of specific technologies that allowed it
Space tech was well and truly developed decades before the internet was anything more than a curiousity.
Rockets are the primary underpinning tech of space exploration - invented centuries earlier but refined enough in the 1930s and 1940s for the Germans to put them into space en route to blowing shit up.
If you'd said "computers" it might be a better argument: while the first peacetime spaceflights were calculated by humans with pen paper & slide rule / log tables, primitive computers were soon brought in and helped in accelerating progress.
Same with exploration, it wasnt printing press in 1500s that expanded exploration (books had been around for several millenia before 1500AD), but the invention and widespread use of the sextant and accurate clocks allowed more precise navigation
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 1y
yeah that's what i meant to say
Unknown_0671@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 1y
Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 1y
A ship is, by definition, a large vessel for navigation purposes. Spaceship is an adaptation from spacecraft to specify that it is 'manned', and spacecraft is a vehicle designed for space. 'Craft' means power, strength, skill or requiring skill, and as well as originating from the items that skilled craftsmen would create, was later used as a nickname for original ships, possibly for a multitude of reasons, such as the skill required to build the vessel, to control it, or the general importance and power of using it for trade between communities.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 1y
yeah that makes sense to me, thank you for the explanation! :P
lnxtx@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 1y
Genocide then, genocide today.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 0 pts · 1y
After reading this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing#History
damn, the asians beat us to it again, i guess. (speaking as an european)