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Ask HN: If you woke up tomorrow and...part 2
6 points by jpwagner on March 21, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments
in a follow up to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=526458

If all of the sudden all technology was gone (assuming we had knowledge of that technology)... What technologies would entirely be skipped in the rebuild?

Dumb examples: there would be no period of time we would think the world was flat. There would be a very short period of time without movable print...



Microsoft :P no, I jest.

Conventional knowledge would still exist for the most part (assuming an approx 10 year time frame), so we probably wouldnt have geocentric delusions or anything like that.

I would guess that as far as technologies went, the internet would be designed in a much more secure manner. Also, it probably would be designed as a scalable network instead of the scale-free network it currently is.


Vacuum Tubes. We would go straight to transistors and other solid-state devices.


A world without Twin Reverbs, SVT's, tubs mic pres, and the like is one I wouldn't like to live in. (Marshalls, on the other than, I care not for...) Heck, even germanium transistors are being put to good use for audio nowadays.

This is a great example of how evolution can produce things that are still useful decades later, even as most people have moved on to the latest and greatest.


Drum brakes? ...something i have always found interesting is what mistakes could we have avoided. Serious mistakes brought on by ignorance and pseudo-science, such as the act of bleeding to heal.


Anyone ever read "A Canticle for Lebowitz"? I recently recently discovered it and am very intrigued.


Don't bother reading the sequel it's not bad, but it's nowhere near as good as canticle.


no QWERTY!




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