Digital Transformation: Interview with David Edgerton, King’s College London

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This conversation took place in June 2017 with David Edgerton, Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History at King’s College London. www.kcl.ac.uk

[@dtaylor091489]

i think he underestimated the importance of computers. while it’s true that we could carry many of the same functions without computers, but the speed at which computers carry out these functions is really important. to illustrate the importance of speed, take the following analogy: pack animals can carry out all of the functions of a tractor, but we wouldn’t be able to carry the current population on the backs of pack animals.

[@dtaylor091489]

all of the ideas that he references as old technologies (underground tunneling, rockets, etc) were never optimized. modernization is just as much about optimizing and distributing technologies, as it is about coming up with new ideas. coming up with new ideas is the easy part. moreover, all of the technology of the next 300 years is currently being proposed in sci-fi novels.

[@tw3638]

Right, ideas are cheap. The fact that there are systems being set up around their execution is what makes it of modern significance.