Breakthroughs Delayed

Steven Johnston's Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer observes that in addition to breakthroughs, and incremental progress, there is a class of innovation that lagged, that could have happened sooner but didn't. In this week's Twitter Space, we talk about technologies that could have happened sooner, but failed to.

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: February 14th, 2022

Breakthroughs Delayed
We’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for February 14th, 2022
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on February 14th included Chris DiBona, Tom Lyon, Ian, MattSci, Jeff Nickoloff, Ahmed, Tim Burnham and vint serp. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
  • Adam’s tweet
  • Steven Johnson (2021) Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer book
  • [@6:00](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=360) Pasteurization 
    • 1850’s swill milk scandal wiki
  • [@10:25](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=625) Automotive safety 
    • Three-point seat belt wiki
    • Windshield safety glass wiki
    • Ralph Nader (1965) Unsafe at Any Speed book
  • [@16:25](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=985) Bryan proposes a rubric, are multiple teams racing? 
    • Walter Isaacson (2021) The Code Breaker book
    • Edward Jenner, 1796 smallpox vaccine
  • [@24:32](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=1472) DTrace 
    • Compact C Type Format CTF
  • [@27:25](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=1645) Docker 
    • OverlayFS
    • Bryan’s Papers We Love talk on Jails and Zones video ~100mins
    • 1963 Honeywell H200 wiki
    • Bryan on harware virtualization history video ~10mins, also here
  • [@37:22](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=2242) The Greate Stirrup Controversy wiki
  • Steve Kemper (2005) Reinventing the Wheel: A Story of Genius, Innovation, and Grand Ambition book
  • Jevons paradox wiki
  • [@47:51](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=2871) Wikipedia 
    • Bryan gets worked up at a dinner party
    • Cliff Clavin (Cheers character) wiki
    • [@52:54](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=3174) Hello Chris!
    • [@57:23](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=3443) Wordle trolling 
      • [@57:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyGgkBxz-mg&t=3460s) Audio editing
  • [@1:01:03](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=3663) JSON
  • [@1:02:22](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=3742) Chris on HBO Silicon Valley
  • [@1:07:05](https://youtu.be/MyGgkBxz-mg?t=4025) Antikythera mechanism wiki
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!
Breakthroughs Delayed
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