Interestingly, it was a two-way street - automobile designers of the 50s and 60s were explicitly influenced by aerospace design. The pointy tail lights you see on late 50s, early 60s Cadillacs are supposed to reference space rockets (and the famous tail fins of that era were added by GM designer Harley Earl as an…

So the video shows us how it moved, but obviously synced sound recording was a long way off. So here's my question - was this thing noisy?

I had the same thought. I assumed there was a central power plant.

I'd rather see a version of this that uses a Google-style algorithm to generate the initial list of thinkers, based on citations in published works. At the very least, they should have picked the blogs first and figured out who was most cited, not the other way around.

I noticed this as well. It's mostly men and mostly Americans and Europeans. Do we think the bias is in the data or in the methodology?

Ignorance is no excuse!

Oh, hello Eurocentrism! I didn't see you come in. How've you been? Not so great, huh? No, no, it was 1931 - nobody blames you. Actually wait, yes we do. Hey, at least you helped make a cool-looking chart, right?

Good news, everyone! The Sun is going to be JUST FINE.

Eh, sorry. I certainly see what you're saying, but personally, I've never once had, wanted to have, or been locked out of a workplace discussion about last night's TV. I chat with coworkers about all kinds of media, but we tend to discuss shows or seasons as a whole if we're talking about TV. And usually we have…

Not to be condescending, but I feel bad for you, man. Paying all that extra money for a bunch of content you'll never watch, not being able to sit down and watch things when you want, and having the things you do want to watch constantly interrupted by ads - it seems like such a waste.

Eh, sorry. This sort of seems like a list of things that have already happened, or at least are currently in-progress:

Completely fascinating. Maybe this is naive or ill-informed of me, but photo comparisons or articles about rapid Chinese urbanization make me think that, in many ways, today's China is the USA of a century ago. I can't help but imagine that, if they were manufacturing iPhones instead of Model Ts, 1910s America would…

I am utterly in love with the name "Captain Future, Wizard of Science".

WELLP. Patrick Stewart is a vampire.

Yeah, I knew that. But it's funnier to imagine him growing out a little peach fuzz, getting a call from his agent, and resignedly picking up a razor.

At least you're not trying to be awful.

Agreed, more or less. I don't automatically think this will be bad, but I do wonder why we mythologize the "original" versions of things so much. The first versions of most things are kinda sucky. Then again, so are most attempts to recapture the magic of successful first versions.