Name: Medieval technology and social change
ISBN: 9780195002669

What Hacker News says

HamptonFoundersJul 2023

Not sure if this is helpful, but a friend fed this conversation through ChatGPT and had it summarize for easier reading:

-The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy -Bigger by Marc Levinson

-The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production-- Toyota's Secret Weapon in the Global Car Wars That Is Now Revolutionizing World Industry by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos

-Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World by Erik Larson

-Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard -White

-The Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany at War by William Manchester

-Edison by Edmund Morris

-Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow

-The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts

-Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

-The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage

-The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick

-Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael S. Malone

-The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester

-The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

-Medieval Technology and Social Change by Lynn White Jr.

-The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner

-Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics by Eric H. Chaney

-Early Electrical Communication by A. F. Marland

-Bibliographical History of Electricity and Magnetism by Silvanus P. Thompson

-Electric Science: Its History, Phenomena, and Applications by J. J. Fahie

-The History and Present State of Electricity by Andrew Ure

-https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/

-De Re Metallica by Georgius Agricola

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jkeplerJan 2022

Lynn White's classic study, "Medieval technology and social change", looks at three broad innovations: the stirrup, which led to mounted knights as shock troops and the feudal reorganization of society to support them; the agricultural revolution driven by iron horse-drawn plows and three-field rotation; and the development and exploration of medical mechanical power and devices.

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mcguireJul 2022

Mistakes, yes. 300 years? No. 300 years, including the Carolingian Dynasty, the expansion of Islam (i.e. The Battle of Tours), the Norse expansion (eventually leading to the domination of Europe by a bunch of guys named Norman)? Nope, no so much. And that's before you start looking at Islamic, Indian, and Asian data.

And then there's radiometric dating and dendrochronology, which are chaotic in their own right, but 300 years? Nah.

Weirdly, I was just reading Lynn White's Medieval technology and social change (1966), discussing the introduction of the stirrup and the heavy plow (as opposed to the scratch plow), both of which happened in this period. There's little in the way of good dates, but some very big changes such as the move from individual family subsistence farms to large, ridge-and-furrow strips and Charles Martel's redistribution of church lands to his followers, introducing true heavy cavalry and the feudal system. (Note: may be a bit out of date with modern research.)

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JacobDotVIMay 2019

The author's point about dissemination of information is spot-on.

A couple of years ago, I read Medieval Technology and Social Change, by Lynn White (https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Technology-Social-Change-Whi...) as recommended by PG. Technically a textbook, it was a dry and drab look at the history of various innovations during Midlevel times - the stirrup, the windmill, etc. The 30,000ft view is that when innovations are introduced it takes a long time both for them to spread and for someone to finally exploit them to their greatest contributive state. While the steam engine was not invented until 1712, all of the components had been available since Roman times. It took quite a long time to find one of the greatest uses of those innovations. At least, it used to take a long time -

Now, information and innovation spread much faster. Society moves much faster. The innovation of the stirrup took a thousands years to propagate. The innovation of the internet took less than 50 years; Smartphones took 5. The pace of global change is increasing exponentially. A modern entrepreneur must have line of sight to the latest innovations in order to anticipate their impact on his or her society, industry, business, and personal well being. No one wanted to be the new Nokia, Borders Books, or Woolworths.

But, let's take a step back from specific innovations, and look at global mega-shifts in society. From the agricultural revolution, to the various metal ages, through the industrial revolution we are now being lapped by the waves of the Information Age.

As humans we quickly absorb each individual change brought forth in the information age - email, cellular connections, the world wide web, the smart phone, etc. Can you imagine running your business without your iPhone? We very quickly adapt to the here and now and forget the way it was (Thank you evolution!). However, what we are not good at perceiving is the systematic, second-order changes that the Information Age will bring. The Agricultural Age brought these changes over thousands of years. The Industrial Age brought them over generations. The Information Age will bring them with alarming speed that we may not be prepared for:

* Retailer's monopoly on local distribution was destroyed by Amazon.com + UPS

* Newspapers have been shattered by the internet's ability to breakdown their stranglehold on the distribution of information.

* The telecom world was turned upside down by the introduction of the cell phones, the internet, and the disruption of their monopoly on land-lines (Note that AT&T is a mere brand name, which was purchased on the cheap by SBC).

* The traditional media world felt this shock earlier this year when a man with a twitter account was able to upend their distribution monopoly on the news and they were left reacting and pandering instead of dictating.

But these are a number of examples in the commercial world. What about society itself? What about the global financial systems? What about governments?

Note: this was part of a letter I sent out with a Christmas gift a few years ago. Full letter here: https://blog.jacob.vi/the-sovereign-individual/

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