The internet and computing is certainly a big shift, but from a visible changes to the world perspective I think 2022 is more alike 1922 than 1922 was alike 1822.

Lolwat? Handheld devices that have the power to process millions of calculations a sec, to record Ultra HD videos, to establish a video conference instantaniously with anyone in the whole world.

Thousands of satellites that orbit the earth constantly. Space missions that are already flying past the limits of our galaxy.

Bio-mechanical organs, giving the crippled back the ability to walk, the blind the ability to see, the deaf to hear.

Welp, I do think that technological progress has been growing at a logarithmic rate, and it's probably keep growing at that pace...

I think the one point in which the author was super correct is, when he says that the progress will be made on technology, rather than the "emotion that arises between a man and a maid" - as I understand it, emotional intelligence - , which will remain stagnant.

Evidently its debatable which century saw more change, from sailboats to Titanic, or gunpowder rockets to Apollo... certainly there have always been cynics and dreamers...

edit: GPS would be pretty shocking to either, I expect

These are a different in quality more so than a different in kind. In 1922 you could already talk to someone 100s of miles away via the telephone. In 1822 you couldn't. And getting there was going to take weeks. So you basically couldn't talk to people long distance unless you were rich or important.

> Thousands of satellites that orbit the earth constantly. Space missions that are already flying past the limits of our galaxy.

Means rather than an end here. Google Maps is neat and convenient, but again, you _could_ use paper maps for much of what people use google maps for. And large paper mapping schemes (e.g. ordnance survey maps in countries of the british empire) were carried out in the 19th century and WW1. Communications could also be done, albeit more expensively. Space missions are still currently in the scientific curiosity stage, rather than impacting people's lives, but who knows maybe commercial near earth space missions end up being the one people get to to talk about for 2022-2122.

> Bio-mechanical organs, giving the crippled back the ability to walk, the blind the ability to see, the deaf to hear.

These are technically more accomplished achievements for sure, but I'm not sure they have the same sort of societal impacts as initiatives against cholera and tubercolosis of the late 19th century. Vaccination is probably the 20th century achievement to call out here.

Sometimes the difference in quality is smaller. Communication by mail could have a cadence reminiscent of email, for example:

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/24089/victorian-mail-del...

Video conferencing worldwide? If you draw attention to it, I suspect it would’ve surprised 1922 people that anyone richer than a literal subsistence farmer would also have a device of their own for the other end of the call, but the existence of the technology itself would not be surprising.

For visible changes between 1922 and 2022? New materials, new lighting, new fashion, drones, the public acceptability of same-sex relationships, race relations (in particular attitudes to those of pre-Colombian, African, and Chinese descent), and possibly also visible might be the absence of disfiguring illnesses that we have now vaccinated against.

But those are likely less than the changes from 1822 to 1922.

(The Blue Marble, or the photos of astronauts walking on the moon… I don’t know if those would’ve been shocking or not. Jules Verne died in 1905).

1822 was a horse-drawn, gas-lit world that was in many ways the same as it had been for millennia. 1922 was a world where rapid transportation (planes , trains, and automobiles),recorded images and sounds, electric light, radio broadcasts and instantaneous intercontinental communication.

Many others, like humanoid robots (that can do actual stuff like independently clean a home), general AI, actual real space travel (where people live on different planets or giant space wheels), flying cars, replicators, fusion energy, self driving cars (those are near though), brain uploads, nanobots, curing many diseases, etc... didn't happen and won't any time soon, and of course some are physically impossible like FTL travel, teleportation, time travel, ...

It's at least nice to have seen one science fiction fantasy come true so far :)

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declini...

In fact, gas light was bleeding edge tech in 1822 - confined to a few parts of cities like London and Baltimore. The New York City gas company was only chartered in 1823. Chicago didn't get gas light until 1850.

Whale oil was still a significant source of illumination right through the 19th century, especially in the US.

"Quantity has a quality all its own"

-Joseph Stalin

Saying the fax let us move information long distance is like saying global trade was around in the middle ages because Macro Polo. The quantity difference is so big it becomes a qualitative difference.

I can arrange to have an arbitrary industrial doodad show up on my doorstep from literally the other side of the world while taking a shit. I can stream 1080p to/from damn near anywhere on the planet. In 30sec I can get answers to specific technical questions that would have taken hours for the president of the US to get an answer to in 1990. The list goes on. Communication and information are just so much more abundant than they were even 75yr ago.

And the quote was about "surprise". I don't think it'd be a complete shock to see that the world got more connected, ordering became easier, deliveries became faster. In 1822 the railroad was very much still in its early stages; the Erie Canal had just been completed, the Pony Express and the telegraph were still almost 40 years away.

Put differently, a lot of "0 to 1" stuff had happened by 1922.

How much of that 0-1 is stuff that existed in some niche or experimental capacity prior to 1822 but simply became possible at scale?

We had writing for millennia but the printing press changed the world.

We've had steel for millennia but the Bessemer process changed the world.

We've always been able to send information long distances but digital communications changed the world.

You can always pick whatever specific innovations you want as the 0-1 transition point but it's the widespread availability of something that changes the world.

To order something from Amazon from your toilet, you need

- indoor plumbing

- computing

- electricity

- industrialized mass production

- global connectivity

- global transportation network

Someone in 1922 could imagine a telephone in a bathroom that could be used to contact a Sears-like company to order a mass-produced product and have it delivered from a faraway place.

In 1822 you barely have the idea of industrialization and electricity, let alone anything else. "Write a letter from your cesspit to have a product from St. Louis delivered to New York, but your letter is instantly delivered instead of taking six weeks, production is faster and cheaper than your local craftsman (it's not being made to order!), and instead of taking six weeks to ship it, it takes two days (2022) or a week(?) (1922)." It's not just that the same kind of thing is happening at a grander scale, it requires a fundamental reorientation of how you'd think about consuming products.

So yeah, Amazon's scale in 2022 is astronomically greater than Sears's in 1922 and that is significant, but they share way more fundamentals than 1822 and 1922 did.

Have in mind that he's referring to the 100 yr period that brought us cars, airplanes, railroads, telephones, light bulbs, electricity, electromagnetism, relativity, evolution, etc.

I think the author was largely correct.

The last 100 years have been about doing things in large quantities in a cheaper, faster way. Of course there has been great progress (the era of the PC/Internet by far the most important one) but the rate is significantly lower.

However, they wouldn’t exactly be incomprehensible to someone from the early 1900’s, since they already had the telegraph, telephony, and fax machines which could send pictures over a long distance came very soon after this article was written.

Whereas I think a person from the early 1800’s would genuinely struggle with understanding the modern world.

What people may mean is that a jump from 10^5 to 10^6 can feel bigger than a jump from 10^6 to 10^7? And that we are more surprised by large things than by some small piece of 'magical paper' which can completely change its display at will.