Kevin Kelly, an editor for Wired , recently made a bold claim on NPR : “I say there is no species of technology that have ever gone globally extinct on this planet . . . I can’t find any [invention, tool, technology] that has disappeared completely from Earth.”
Nothing? I asked. Brass helmets? Detachable shirt collars? Chariot wheels?
Nothing, he said.
Can’t be, I told him. Tools do hang around, but some must go extinct.
If only because of the hubris — the absolute nature of the claim — I told him it would take me a half hour to find a tool, an invention that is no longer being made anywhere by anybody.
Go ahead, he said. Try.
If you listen to our Morning Edition debate, I tried carbon paper (still being made), steam powered car engine parts (still being made), Paleolithic hammers (still being made), 6 pages of agricultural tools from an 1895 Montgomery Ward & Co. Catalogue (every one of them still being made), and to my utter astonishment, I couldn’t find a provable example of an technology that has disappeared completely.
Robert Krulwich, the NPR correspondent who interviewed Kelly, asked readers for suggestions on dead technologies and included a few in a follow-up article . No one seems to have found an example yet. Can you think of one?
(Via: Neatorama )
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Letters
Glenn C. Loury makes several points with which I can’t possibly disagree (“Tucker and the Right,” January…
Visiting an Armenian Archbishop in Prison
On February 3, I stood in a poorly lit meeting room in the National Security Services building…
Christians Are Reclaiming Marriage to Protect Children
Gay marriage did not merely redefine an institution. It created child victims. After ten years, a coalition…
