Searching for the Sphere of Archimedes

A really, really fascinating article for anyone with a passing interest in the history of science.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/05/14/070514fa_fact_seabrook?printable=true

I had read of the Antikythera mechanism before, but did not quite realize its complexity. Also, I had no idea they found others. The author muses on how technology is abandoned by various cultures over the years. It's something worth pondering, because it goes beyond technology and history, or even design. It has to do with culture. It hurts to say it, and I know of at least one scientist who will throw things at me for saying it, but science is part of culture. Function does not live on a Tibetan mountaintop.

There is a set of alternate history novels in which a group of apartheid South African mercenaries go back in time to the American Civil War. They bring the shematics for the AK-47. In the novel, naturally the South manufactures this asynchronous assault rifle, and things happen as may be.

This article of the Mechanism reveals that such fantasies are exactly that. Our technology does not exist in a Platonic vacuum of absolute functionality, but in a thick atmosphere of our own values, the primordial muck of design. Worthies of the American Civil War would no sooner begin manufacturing AK-47s than we would begin manufacturing race-specific retroviruses. We design and build things according to our values, and not according to a single function.

That said, it's probably a good thing we didn't have tanks in 1600, or AK-47s in 1862. Hooray for values.