The $64,000 question

Billy_T wrote:

bnw,

Modern touch screen technology was invented in Oak Ridge, TN in 1977. I’ve been in that very room many times. It was funded by the private sector.

It’s a side issue, but, no. Touch screen tech wasn’t invented in 1977, or in Tennessee.

From touch displays to the Surface: A brief history of touchscreen technology

Historians generally consider the first finger-driven touchscreen to have been invented by E.A. Johnson in 1965 at the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern, United Kingdom. Johnson originally described his work in an article entitled “Touch display—a novel input/output device for computers” published in Electronics Letters. The piece featured a diagram describing a type of touchscreen mechanism that many smartphones use today—what we now know as capacitive touch. Two years later, Johnson further expounded on the technology with photographs and diagrams in “Touch Displays: A Programmed Man-Machine Interface,” published in Ergonomics in 1967.

CERN, in the early 1970s, another public sector creation, did the vast majority of the rest of the research and development, before other groups jumped in. Private companies didn’t jump in — they never do — until after public sector institutions did the heavy lifting. Oh, and the vast majority of all telecom technology innovations are based on a foundation put down by great mathematicians, and that goes back centuries. They weren’t in the private sector. They were primarily teachers, professors, etc.

As I wrote MODERN touch screen technology was invented in Oak Ridge, TN in 1977. This is the technology in wide use today. Three years earlier clear screen technology was invented in Oak Ridge, TN. Both were funded by the private sector.

Careful Billy you’re very close to Obama’s ‘you didn’t build that business’.

I see a pattern post feudalism in which common people were paid wages for their hard work and enterprise and some were able to achieve greater wealth than the nobility. The rest improved their economic situation affording opportunities previously denied them. It is called capitalism. At present no other system is poised to replace it.

They had to sell their labor power in the first place because the rise of capitalism destroyed their way of life, forced them off their small farms, crushed their ability to self-provide through their own home industries, their own artisanship or craftswork. They had no choice but to go into the factories where they made a fraction of what they used to make on their own, and had to work many, many more hours to get even that.

And I just gave you stats to disprove your theory that “the rest improved their economic situation affording opportunities previously denied them.” No. They were far worse off than they were prior to the rise of capitalism, and in bad times, in much more dangerous straits. Now, they no longer can fall back on their own farms and small crafts. That’s almost all been destroyed by factory farms and mass production.

Did you know that more than 3 billion humans live on less than $2.00 a day around the world? Many tens of millions go to bed each night hungry, and several million die of starvation. Just 60 humans, worldwide, now hold as much wealth as the bottom 3.6 billion.

Seriously, how on earth can you continue to cheerlead for a system that produces such massive inequality, hunger, starvation, pollution and waste?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 12 months ago by Billy_T.

As I wrote MODERN touch screen technology was invented in Oak Ridge, TN in 1977. This is the technology in wide use today. Three years earlier clear screen technology was invented in Oak Ridge, TN. Both were funded by the private sector.

Careful Billy you’re very close to Obama’s ‘you didn’t build that business’.

But you’re still wrong. “Modern touch screen technology” was invented before 1977. As the article proves.

It might be nice if you would support your own assertions with links and such.

;>)

As for Obama’s statement. He was correct. No business owner ever “builds that.” They all have massive help from society, from centuries of intellectual legacies, from workers, from public sectors here and overseas. It’s actually quite absurd for one person to try to claim credit for any business development. The modern world is far too interconnected and interdependent for that, and just a little digging always uncovers massive help from thousands, if not millions of others when it comes to all the great innovations throughout history.

Wrong again. Feudalism drove people off the land and into the service of the nobility. When the Black Plague depopulated europe labor came at a premium and wages were paid for the first time. Specialization and the rise of guilds set the stage for capitalism with the onset of the industrial revolution.

My people were coal miners. If they weren’t then that was because they were forced into military service for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Time and time again until they could pay their way here. In their lifetime they bettered their life here and four generations later their family has further bettered their lives. Capitalism can work.

Please provide links for your assertions. I’ve provided books that show you’re wrong.

Feudal relations allowed direct producers to control their own production, set their own prices, keep their earnings. They had to tithe a percentage to their overlords, but, unlike the (unprecedented) legal structure of capitalism (which followed feudalism), their production was not owned by others. For the first time, with the advent of capitalism, a producer’s work was owned from the getgo by a new kind of overlord, the capitalist boss. A true revolution would have done away with any kind — feudal lord or capitalist.

Small farmers were driven off their lands to set the stage for capitalist ascendancy. Google “enclosures,” which got their start in Britain, as did capitalism. The British state also help capitalism work its way toward dominance by doing away with centuries of traditional holidays for “peasants,” block them from hunting and fishing rights, and then allow mass production to crush the life out of the rest of home industries and self-provisioning.

Prior to capitalism, a family could make it on their own, decide how much time to spend on work and play. With capitalism, they were forced to give up their relative independence, and work far more hours, without those Feudal holidays.

Not saying Feudalism was good, by any means. It was terrible for many. But in many ways, average Joes and Janes had it better than they did with the rise of capitalism. And capitalism itself was “tamed” somewhat due to massive anticapitalist agitation, strikes, protests and the like, wherein average Joes and Janes were beaten or killed by capitalists and “the state.” They died so we could have tolerable working conditions, which capitalists never would have provided if they hadn’t been forced to.

You need to read — at least — The Invention of Capitalism and The Origin of Capitalism, as already listed. I have yet to see you post any references at all.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 12 months ago by Billy_T.

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

I have yet to see you post any references at all.

Why should I? It wouldn’t matter with you. I know my family’s history but of course you know better!

Find your utopia and move there. Oh wait, it doesn’t have a name and doesn’t exist but you can reference it in a book. Nice. How’s that working for you?

Why should you? Because you keep making all kinds of unsupported claims, and I’m not talking about the one you just made about your family. I can’t argue against your family history, but I can argue against the reasons why you think it happened.

And I’m not trying to find a utopia. They don’t exist. I’m just talking about doing things in a markedly better way. Better. Not perfect. Nothing is perfect. But we can always do better.

Again, can you please describe the actual capitalist mechanisms by which you see it achieving all of these amazing things — even though I’ve demonstrated they haven’t happened, anywhere. Please describe what makes capitalism itself unique, how it works, what it does that makes it different from any previous system. And please avoid the lofty claims about its results. Talk about what makes it tick.