[48330] in Cypherpunks
Re: RANT: When hi-tech is a hinderance (freedom w/in limits)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James A. Donald)
Sun Jan 28 01:28:22 1996
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 22:23:40 -0800
To: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous), cypherpunks@toad.com
From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
At 01:48 AM 1/28/96 +0100, Anonymous wrote:
>
> A short 'rant' on techno-dinosaurism...
>
> Or look back to the 13th century when European soldiers were
> high-tech wearing tons of armor and used cross bows. it was
> imposing high-tech for the time, but they couldn't move fast or
> fire arrows quickly... and they were skagmeat for Mongols
> who were comparatively low-tech.
This is incorrect: The Mongols had superior technology to the
people they conquered. In particular Mongol arrows could penetrate
armor more effectively than anybody else's arrows, and Mongol siege
engines could level city walls far more effectively than anybody
else's siege engine.
It might well seem strange that nomads had higher technology, but
urban civilization of that era was in a twilight era and suffered
great technological stagnation and regression.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
|
We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/
and our property, because of the kind |
of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald
derives from this right, not from the |
arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd@echeque.com
