There is another point on this subject that might be worthwhile to
consider.
Technology rarely acts alone. Discoveries, advances, and innovations
often merge and combine to engender new applications, new products that
would not be possible without the important contribution of each separate
technological development. Guns, for instance, would not have come into
existence without the important contribution of gunpowder (formerly used
by the Chinese for fireworks), combined with the matchlock, the flintlock,
and subsequent advances in gunpowder-ignition mechanisms.
Also, electricity would never have found its way into hundreds of millions
of homes in the developed world without the development of generation,
transmission, and distribution technologies. And we can make the same
argument for the advance of the oil industry, and so on.
Frank Voehl (FVoehl@aol,com)
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>