Your Web News in One Place

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

Sign up for GreenGeeks web hosting
June 16, 2012 08:00 pm GMT

The Way Things Work

things1Magic, they call it. And indeed we may add an appendix to that old saw: any sufficiently advanced, or sufficiently obscure, technology is indistinguishable from magic.You must know the story of the Mechanical Turk. How princes and tradesmen were amazed by this ingenious device's ability to play chess intelligently. In an age of steam and brass hinges! Yet at the time thousands were fooled. Had they known a bit more about machines, they might have realized it was not just improbable, but impossible.The Mechanical Turks of our day aren't designed for entertainment, but to be bought and used, yet a similar goes into preventing the secrets of their operation from being questioned. In fact, we are already at a time where it is more or less impossible for one person to understand or question them. Apple may be ahead of the curve on this trend, but while it appears they've been leading the industry by the nose, they in turn are being led by the inexorable forward motion of technology. Open hardware advocates fight the good fight, and they fight it valiantly, but defeat is inevitable.

Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/ZTjjZjU1KJc/

Share this article:    Share on Facebook
View Full Article

Techcrunch

TechCrunch is a leading technology blog, dedicated to obsessively profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news.

More About this Source Visit Techcrunch