Tag: technology change

Transportation costs dropped 95% in the 1800s

There are a lot of data points on travel cost and travel time during the first half of the 1800s mentioned by Allen Guelzo in his fantastic book, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President.

Here is the most amazing part:

Overall drop in cost to transport freight with canals, steamboats, and railroads (location 641):

  • 95%

I want to accumulate some of these tidbits since I’m amazed at the radical change created by technology.

Transportation time and cost

Consider:

Travel by stagecoach: Continue reading “Transportation costs dropped 95% in the 1800s”

More good stuff on the open frontier of technology – 2/18

A few articles on the amazing things going on the in wide open tech frontier. Video of building an airplane. Potential for blockchain (which is the tech behind Bitcoin), we are all moving toward being entrepreneurs, and FAA’s draft rules on drone use.

1/7 – BBC – The world’s biggest ship – for 53 days – The Globe can carry 19,100 of the standard 20 foot containers. That’s equal to 4,550 of the usual container you see pulled on a big rig on the freeway. It is the largest cargo ship on the sea. It weighs in at 186,000 gross tons.

It only takes a crew of 23 to operate this ship, which shows how automated it is. The engine is so efficient that this ship uses 20% less fuel per container than a ship that can hold 10,000 TEU (I think that is the abbreviation).

Boeing – Time lapse video of airplane construction – hattip BehindTheBlack blog.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&x-yt-cl=84838260&v=SE71NJl-naY&x-yt-ts=1422327029]

1/22 – TechVibes – How Technology Behind Bitcoin Could Transform Accounting As We Know It – Great article providing background on blockchain, which is the core technology behind Bitcoin. Good brain stretcher on where blockchain could go.

Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontier of technology – 2/18”

The change from Apps is just getting started. (Radical change #3)

Another part of my effort to explain that while I see radical change on the horizon in other areas, I have a blind spot how those things will affect auditing.

1/19 – Mark Mills at Forbes – The Mobile Revolution Has Only Just Begun – Look again at the radical change in the last century:

Not only have radios become cheap but they’ve collapsed in size while rising in capability. A trailer-pulled radio that weighed one ton in WWI is now a chipset weighing a fraction of an ounce buried inside a smartphone that can handle one million-fold more traffic than those first Marconis.

Combine that with a computer the size of a phone and you have a smart phone.

Continue reading “The change from Apps is just getting started. (Radical change #3)”

Digital currencies are radical change on the horizon for banking and credit cards. (Radical change #2)

There is radical change all around us and more on the way. I know that. My blind spot is figuring out how that will affect my audit firm.

Here’s one part of radical change I can see on the horizon:

1-24 – Wall Street Journal – Bitcoin and the Digital-Currency Revolution / For all bitcoin’s growing pains, it represents the future of money and global finance.– For a brain stretcher on digital currency, check out the article. Focus is on Bitcoin, which is merely the starting point in a revolution of disintermediation.

Just like money funds disintermediated (that means cut out of the picture) bank deposits in the distant ‘80s, bitcoin and other yet-to-be-invented digital currencies will disintermediate a huge portion of the financial system.

Picture the long series of transactions when you buy a cup of coffee at the corner shop with your credit card (this is a long quote cited under fair use, oh, also to promote the book it is extracted from): Continue reading “Digital currencies are radical change on the horizon for banking and credit cards. (Radical change #2)”

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 1/6

More articles on the open frontiers of technology and private space flight. But first, some downsides of tech misuse and letting the world pass you by.

Downside of tech revolution and change

Not everything is getting better. There is abuse of technology along with quantitative and qualitative decay:

1/2 – Schneier on Security – Doxing as an Attack – New terms you didn’t want to know, but really ought to: doxing –

Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 1/6”

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 12/12

There are wonderful things going on in the tech world. Also some not so great things in education and publishing. Here’s a few articles on the good and not-so-good stuff.

Technology

12/8 – Economist – Free the drones / Drones have immense commercial potential—so long as regulators don’t try to tether them to the ground

Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 12/12”

Would you rather be in the middle class today or the richest man in the world in 1836?

If it was possible to choose, would you prefer to live life in the middle class, struggling to get by in a lousy economy with an uncertain retirement, or would you rather live the life of Nathan Rothschild, who was the richest man on the planet when he departed this life in 1836?

John Kay discusses this idea in his article, Precise inflation figures ignore evolutions in product quality and consumer choice.

Mr. Kay points out that Mr. Rothschild was richer than either John D Rockefeller or Bill Gates. He was the second richest man in all of history.

Before you say you’d rather live his life than yours, consider this:

Continue reading “Would you rather be in the middle class today or the richest man in the world in 1836?”

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 9/16

Amazing technology today and the technology that is long gone. Also, a decision soon on private sector spaceship.

Technology

9/13 – Carpe Diem – Video of the day: Awesome machines – Very cool machines automating complex stuff:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c30_1409278220

I like the chicken picker-upper and the huge tree-cutting stuff.

9/11 – Heaven666 – These are the Things Your Kids Will Never Understand – Gotta’ check out the article for the visuals. A few I like:

Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 9/16”

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 8/15

Just like the wild west in the late 1800s, the frontiers of publishing, technology, and energy are wide open. Here’s a few of the articles that stretched my understanding of this amazing world we live in. Just a brief comment on each.

Downside of technology

Yes, there is a downside.

7/30 – Yahoo – Drone Carrying contraband crashes at SC prison – Drone carrying cell phones, marijuana, synthetic marijuana (huh? what is that?), and tobacco crashed outside the fence of a prison. Article mentions a successful effort to get contraband inside a Georgia prison last year.

Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 8/15”

45th anniversary of Apollo 11’s flight to the moon landing — – 60th anniversary of 707’s first flight

July 20, 1969 is the day Apollo 11 landed on the moon. I vaguely remember watching. What an astounding accomplishment for humanity and the U.S.

Two fun articles:

July 15, 1954 is the day the Boeing 707 took its first flight.  The decisions made after the first flight revolutionized air travel.

Continue reading “45th anniversary of Apollo 11’s flight to the moon landing — – 60th anniversary of 707’s first flight”

More good stuff on the open frontiers – 7/7

A few articles on the open frontiers of space and technology that are worth a read and a brief comment.

Space

6/14/12 – Popular Mechanics – Tapping the Riches of Space – Continue reading “More good stuff on the open frontiers – 7/7”

10 pieces of everyday tech that weren’t around in the ancient days of 1970

Check out 10 Modern Technologies We Lived Without In Primitive, Pre-Millenial America

The change in 40 years, with pictures of the old and new stuff. Remember not having:

  • Microwave ovens
  • Hair dryers
  • Cell phones
  • TV remote controls
  • Personal Computers (versus a manual typewriter!)
  • Video games
  • Digital music
  • Lead-free paint
  • Pocket calculators
  • Video cassette recorders

No better time to be alive than today!

(Hat tip – Behind the Black)

Radical drop in cost of shipping cotton when steamboats arrived on the scene

We are all amazed at the radical drop in cost of computing over the last 20 or 40 years. I have a number of posts on point and have more planned.

Watching new technology severely drop costs isn’t anything new. Here is just one more data point from the early 1800s for illustration.

I’m accumulating these ideas and hope to weave them together in a larger story some day.

Here’s a comment on the impact of steamboats on Mississippi river commerce from Professor Allen Guelzo in Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Continue reading “Radical drop in cost of shipping cotton when steamboats arrived on the scene”

Consider the radical transformation in the last 300 years. And capitalism’s role therein.

Here’s the formula: compare life for the typical person today to 30, 100, or 300 years ago. The things we take for granted to today would have been an unimaginable blessing back then. I get a kick out of that story line every time I see it.

One more in a long string of examples is from Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek:  Capitalism: The Greatest Engine of Equality. He ponders what a man from 1700 would think of a visit to Bill Gates. Just about every one of the astounding things observed by the visitor from 1700 is also available to almost every person living in the U.S.

The driving force behind all of this?

Capitalism.

And property rights.

And a functional legal system.

And a functional democracy.

Read the full article. A few things that would have been beyond the wildest dream 300 years ago: Continue reading “Consider the radical transformation in the last 300 years. And capitalism’s role therein.”

Visual of progress in last 40 years

Check out a post from Cafe Hayek using picture to show the progress for middle-America with Scenes from 1970s Middle-Class America.

I remember each of those five items from my childhood. I far prefer the far better, more capable, easier technology of today.

There is no better time to be alive than today!