Check it out, everybody! It’s a train-wreck crossing three or four distinct academic disciplines! We’ve got a chart with no units purporting to convey information. We’ve got a euro-centric view of history that completely discounts the advances of the rest of the world. And we’ve got a categorical denial that any of the significant technological advances between the fall of the Roman Empire and “the Renaissance” (or, to use the more hip term, the Early Modern Era). The compass. Windmills. Movable type. Lenses.
generic1 puts it a bit differently:
(via ageofreason)
To be fair, they made some advancements in like, chain mail. Lots of metallurgy-type stuff, plate armor, etc. They reapplied gunpowder from the Chinese. The vaulted arch? I think? Or was that the Romans? Still, that’s a pretty pitiful track record for a thousand years.
It was a lost millennium. Let’s never go back. No more magical thinking.
Fair enough. But could we at least have some actual thinking? I’m not judging—I’m just saying that a few more charts like this will make people think the Internet is dumb.
No more magic thinking? Look at our pop culture: It’s all vampires, zombies and witches. Portrayals of technology always include doomsday. We used to dream of the possibilities of space, now we’re canceling Constellation.
