Resistance Is Futile
Artificial intelligence, gene modification, and self-driving cars are causing fear and uncertainty about how technology is changing our lives. But humans have struggled to accept innovations throughout history. In this episode, we explore three innovations that transformed the world and show how people have adapted — and ask whether we can do the same today.
Essential Question
Why do we resist innovation and why is our resistance always futile?
Timeline Outline
Artificial intelligence, gene modification, and self-driving cars are causing fear and uncertainty about how technology is changing our lives. But humans have struggled to accept innovations throughout history. In this episode, we explore three innovations that transformed the world and show how people have adapted — and ask whether we can do the same today.
Essential Question
Why do we resist innovation and why is our resistance always futile?
Timeline Outline
- Ethiopia more than a thousand years ago coffee was discovered by a goat herder.
- Then moved to Yemen where it was then used as a drink like a tea or mixed with animal fat for travel or a liquor called quesher.
- by the 1500's it traveled to most of the ottoman empire.
- 1511 people thought coffee could have negative effects. The government took noticed when the governor of Mecca and the coffee houses because people were writing seditious poetry about him but his boss overruled this because he loved coffee
- When coffee arrived in Europerope people thought it would be a treat to wine and beer industries. Then they went to the Pope to ban coffee for good as a "devil's drink", but when the Pope took a sip of some coffee he said that it was delicious and should be made a true christian beverage.
- 1674 coffee arrived in sweden and it was taxed heavily and if you didn't pay your cups and dishes would be confiscated. Then they banned coffee all together to prove coffee was bad the king of sweden took two inmates that were identical twins on death row and had one drink a lot of tea and the other drink a lot of coffee the twins outlived both the doctors and the king so the ban was lifted.
- If society sees more benefits than risks then it will be accepted. We are afraid to lose something we already have.
- Mid 1800's the first rendition of the tractor appeared.
- Late 1800's John Froelich invented the gasoline tractor. Revolutionized the industry made agriculture very efficient and put maney farmers out of work.
- In the 1890's there was the populist movement driven by farmers put out of work by technological innovations.
- 1919 the horse association of america was born the horse advocates they did not want tractors to take over.
- In 1921 the Tractor and National Implement movement and the Horse Association of America had declined to participate in the competition between horses and tractors to plow a 10 acer feild the fastest. Many horses died that day from the heat and the tractors were victorious.
- The HAA argued that horses were the best and the military would always need a cavarry and by 1945 the HAA was admitting defeat.
- Telephone was not a scary thing to society it was initially thought of as almost a gimmick and a toy.
- Late 1800's making a phone call was a process you would generate a signal through your line to alert a operator of the switch board. The operator would ask you the number and then would plug you into that number. If you wanted to make a long distance call you would get delayed from operator to operator until finally you would be connected.
- Women started becoming operators for the phones just like a year over a year after its invention. This job created many jobs for women right around the women's suffrage movement.
- 1917 the US joined WW1 and they sent many telephone operators to the front of the war. The only people really equipped to operate the telephone were women because they were about 50 seconds faster than men. This meant the difference between life and death because you could have incoming fire and this means attack or retreat.
- The Girls that operated the phones in the war were blatantly ignored when they returned home and received no recognition of their service.
- 1960's was finally when women won over the push pull resistance for them joining the workforce.
- When the telephone was automated in the 1970's and that job was made obsolete bet was the same time that many better jobs appeared for women.