History

Wristwatches or Strapping Time to Wrists

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Today, watches are more or less universal, folded into phones and fitness trackers or strapped to wrists of all kinds. And yet, not too long ago, in the 19th century, different ways of wearing time were sharply gendered and coded. For men, pocket watches coordinated time. Railways depended on standardised pocket watches to prevent collisions and make timetables possible at all. The logic of precise, shared time leaked into other social contexts. Catching the right train, showing up to court on time, and making …

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Magic: The Spying

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In 1856, the French government faced a peculiar problem in Algeria. The Marabouts, local religious leaders, were using what appeared to be supernatural abilities to convince locals that France’s colonial presence could be overcome by divine intervention. Napoleon III, the French Emperor at the time, needed something stronger than military force; he needed to shatter the Marabouts’ mystical authority entirely. So he did what any reasonable emperor would do: fight fire with fire. Napoleon III sent a magician to Algeria. Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, already …

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Parkinson’s Law, Hawaiian Time, and the Space Between

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People get cast in molds (of status and roles) for which they are variously equipped. The problem lies between man’s creativeness and diversity and the rather specific needs of his institutions, for most cultures and the institutions they engender represent highly specialized solutions to rather specific problems. For example, in England during the early days of the industrial revolution, villagers and field hands were brought into the factory to work. These first generations of mill hands were not conditioned to the whistle. Like all preindustrial …

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A Timeline of Communication Patterns – What Comes Next (part 3)

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Articles in the series: A Timeline of Communication Patterns – Introduction (part 1) A Timeline of Communication Patterns – Recurring Themes (part 2) A Timeline of Communication Patterns – What Comes Next (part 3) Our previous analysis reveals that societies selectively innovate based on their most deeply held values and most pressing constraints. AI development follows a similar pattern of selection. Just as Mesopotamian writing systems emerged for transactional clarity (tracking grain, livestock, and debts), AI prioritizes structured data over visual flair, parsing massive …

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A Timeline of Communication Patterns – Recurring Themes (part 2)

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Articles in the series: A Timeline of Communication Patterns – Introduction (part 1) A Timeline of Communication Patterns – Recurring Themes (part 2) A Timeline of Communication Patterns – What Comes Next (part 3) As described in the previous article, communication technologies compressed time and space, creating shared experiences across vast geographic and historical dimensions. Innovation through Constraints Throughout history, we observe a pattern where new communication methods emerge precisely to overcome the constraints of their predecessors. Consider how clay tokens addressed the fundamental …

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A Timeline of Communication Patterns – Introduction (part 1)

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Articles in the series: A Timeline of Communication Patterns – Introduction (part 1) A Timeline of Communication Patterns – Recurring Themes (part 2) A Timeline of Communication Patterns – What Comes Next (part 3) Smiling, touching, watching, copying, talking, listening, singing, dancing, painting, writing, and making; these are the ways we have always connected with one another. From cave paintings to the latest AI models, our methods of communication have been shaped by the culture in which we are born, power hierarchies, and the …

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The Historical Method: You Learn Something Old Every Day

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“You learn something old every day.” X the Owl, a character in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood This article is inspired by a comment on the askHistorians subreddit. It highlights a fundamental difference in how historians approach facts compared to those from fields like science or engineering (my own background). Many assume historians can offer definitive truths about past events, but the reality is more nuanced. And one thing that I, and I suspect others around here who’ve been trained as historians, learn is that the …

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Exploring the Dynamics of Power: Hard, Soft and Smart Strategies

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Before each of his military campaigns, Napoleon always made a point of passing through Épernay, stopping at the cellars of his friend Jean-Rémy Moët [a French vintner who brought the champagne producers Moët & Chandon to fame] to pick up a supply of champagne.  “In victory you deserve it, in defeat you need it,” he said. [… After Napoleon abdicated and Paris fell during the “War of the Sixth Coalition”] Cellars throughout Champagne were plundered, the worst being those of Moët, which saw six hundred thousand bottles emptied …

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