06-17-2019, 05:54 AM | #101 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Approaching TL9?
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06-17-2019, 08:39 AM | #102 | |
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
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Re: Approaching TL9?
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"Hewlett-Packard Corporation joined the market in early 1972 with the HP-35 scientific calculator. It could not only add, subtract, multiply, and divide but compute trigonometric functions, logarithms, and exponents. In other words, it did the work of a slide rule and more. The calculator sold for $395. Not to be outdone, Texas Instruments introduced its first calculator, the Datamath (or TI-2500), later that year. The device carried out basic arithmetic and sold for $149.95." ( Electronic Calculators—Handheld ) So within a year of seeing the ad there were calculators at about half and one-fourth the $600 price tag. 1973 saw the SR-10 for $150 came out. What followed was a race to put in as many features possible while at the same time reducing the price. Being born in 1966 I saw first hand the insane progression of digital devices of the 1970s and 1980s. In fact, early on the school I was in forbid the use of digital calculators but my parents had old text books from the early 1960s which included how to use a slide rule and so I brought my father's. The funny thing is that many of my math teachers didn't know what to do as the rule referred to a digital calculator which a slide rule was most definitely wasn't. More over the other kids didn't even know how to use one. Around the 8th grade the school gave up and allowed digital calculators. My high school not only allowed calculators but had a computer room (filled with Apple IIs). The middle school is long gone replaced by the A Plus Arts Academy and my high school now calls itself Eastmoor Academy High School. |
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06-17-2019, 08:43 AM | #103 | |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Approaching TL9?
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Same goes for all the other examples in the list. If you asked such a person to name the method of artificial embryo twinning, they would not call it cloning regardless of how it technically is. They would only count cloning of adult organisms like Dolly as real cloning.
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06-17-2019, 08:53 AM | #104 | |
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Re: Approaching TL9?
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06-17-2019, 09:01 AM | #105 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Approaching TL9?
The origin of the word "bionics" comes from a fusion of "biology" and "electronics" and it was about the creation of complex systems that functioned like living orgainsms. Not necessarily limited to prosthetics either.
Applying it to a simple (and isolated) example of inspiration derived from a living organism is erroneous.
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06-17-2019, 09:39 AM | #106 | |
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Re: Approaching TL9?
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I must say though that for most of the time I've been on these forums, I would have argued strongly against my present self.
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06-17-2019, 09:41 AM | #107 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: Approaching TL9?
Maybe not erroneous in terms of the definitions used in that Wikipedia page on bionics, but definitely so with respect to what GURPS and general sci-fi understands by it. That's akin to suggesting that cybernetics involves studying the economy. It does, but it's mixing up definitions in different fields.
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06-17-2019, 10:44 AM | #108 | |
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Re: Approaching TL9?
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The closest thing is "Neural interfaces (pp. 48-49) and cybernetics (pp. 207- 221), except for bionics intended to replace missing body parts" which doesn't really tell you anything. This is kind of at odds with what Webster gives you: "a science concerned with the application of data about the functioning of biological systems to the solution of engineering problems" And Oxford has this: "The study of mechanical systems that function like living organisms or parts of living organisms." Both of these might as well be where the wikipedia article is getting its definition. This IMHO is a classic case of mistaking the results for the function. It is akin to when a new technological gizmo come out and everyone saying 'isn't science wonderful'. But technology in of itself isn't science but rather a product of science. |
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06-17-2019, 11:03 AM | #109 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: Approaching TL9?
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bionic:
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06-17-2019, 11:08 AM | #110 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Approaching TL9?
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earth, humanity, real world, tech level, tl9 |
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