[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Obviously, the book made no reference at all to the possibility that any of the companies who worked on developing the chip had been influenced by any kind of so-called "alien technology."
That hypothesis is damned nonsense! It is pernicious, dangerous nonsense. I personally know some of the people who invented ICs, and I know most of the ones who discovered CF. I am quite sure they got no help from Little Green men or anyone else. Mainly they had to fight against aliens -- that is to say, against people stuck in the premodern, prescientific mindset.
All of the advances made in integrated circuits and other electronics were made in well-documented research conducted by ordinary human beings. These people are all well known and there is no doubt they did all the research on their own without prompting from alien technology.
This kind of thinking disturbs me. It boils down to the notion that people are not capable of doing what we have actually done. The corollary is that we are somehow incapable of making revolutionary changes or revitalizing civilization. During the dark ages, Europeans looked at the ruins of ancient Roman buildings and roads, and they got the idea that these things were created by God-like Superman or people who were aided by magic. They decided the world must have gone downhill, and they would never be achieve such magnificent accomplishments again. Nowadays people natter on about the "greatest generation" as if there is something special about Depression-era people, and we will not see their likes again. As the Duke of Albany put it:
"The oldest have borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long."
This degenerates into the "end of history" and "the end of science" pathologies.
One of the important themes of my book is that mankind has made revolutionary wholesale changes many times in the past, and there is no reason to think we have somehow lost that ability and we will not make more changes in the future. If people come to believe we are helpless infants who cannot develop CF or anything else, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Jed
