| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
31 Oct 2004 03:41:17 AM |
| Object: |
OT: At last. The government is now open to an alternative |
At last. The government is now open to an alternative
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1340000,00.html
John Naughton
Sunday October 31, 2004
The Observer
The trouble with history is that it's written backwards - with the
benefit of hindsight. It views events and decisions made long ago from
the vantage point of the present. This leads to what Herbert
Butterfield called 'the Whig interpretation of history': the
representation of the past as a sequence of steps progressing towards
the present. This is not only misleading, it is also unfair. The
problem is that at any point in time the future is unknowable. If we
knew what the future held, we'd all be rich.
The history of technology is particularly prone to the Whig
interpretation. To those of us accustomed to a world in which everyone
has a mobile phone, it seems incredible that people once accepted the
idea that a phone had to be tethered to the wall. When mobiles first
appeared, their exorbitant costs, swingeing tariffs, anti-social
characteristics and erratic coverage led many people to assume that
they would just be a toy for yuppies and poseurs. The loudest cheer
Norman Lamont ever received in the House of Commons came in his 1990
Budget statement when he announced a tax on mobiles. Now? How many of
us wish we'd bought shares in Racal Vodafone (as it then was) in 1985?
John Naughton
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=18510aff.0311300238.35bfa859%40posting.google.com
Open Source
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&selm=18510aff.0409120223.125ac943%40posting.google.com
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