Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Lunchtime reading
A short history of social media. Be sure to chat, tweet, Facebook, or link this post. And it includes this factoid:
IRC clients were primarily UNIX-based… but in 1996 four Israeli technologists invented the instant messenger (IM) system for desktop computers called ICQ. This was quickly purchased by AOL and it became a mainstream hit. IM technology helped developed the emotional lexicon of social media, with avatars (expressive images to represent yourself), abbreviations (A/S/L? = age, sex, location?) and emotion icons (or emoticons).
I had not known that instant messanging was an Israeli invention. It made me think of President Obama's unintentionally damning recitation of Muslim inventions, most of which are centuries behind us, and how long such a speech would have to be if it paid homage to Jewish inventions.
12 Comments:
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Tue Jun 09, 12:12:00 PM:
"I had not known that instant messanging was an Israeli invention."
It wasn't. ICQ was, but it was not the first instant messaging system. It was, however, sophisticated for its time and included some features (including, if I remember correctly, current status and search functions) which were new.
By Pyrus, at
Tue Jun 09, 12:25:00 PM:
"It made me think of President Obama's unintentionally damning recitation of Muslim inventions, most of which are centuries behind us, and how long such a speech would have to be if it paid homage to Jewish inventions."
As you well know, Barack was trying to make nice to the Muslims and did so by applauding the Muslim world's various contributions over the ages. I know you don't agree with his aim of making nice to the Muslims but his means surely cannot baffle you.
Now when Barack wants to make nice to the Israelis he has a much simpler approach at his disposal: Congress lets him give them $4b in foreign aid. Annually.
But sure, why not add an elegy reciting Israeli inventions too. That'll even it out.
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Jun 09, 02:32:00 PM:
"by applauding the Muslim world's various contributions over the ages"
You seem to have utterly missed the point. That little list of accomplishments was factually wrong. Many of the things with which 'the Muslim world' is credited with accomplishing were not accomplished by Muslims at all, but by Hindus, Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians living as subjects to the caliphates, (Maimonides is a favorite example of mine) while others are simply fantasies.
Like the 'Muslims invented soap' one that I've heard before, or 'Muslims triggered the Renaissance by translating Greek humanities into Arabic.' (The Muslims' most direct contribution to the Renaissance was their conquest of the Byzantine Empire, [finished in 1453] which resulted in an exodus of learned, Greek-speaking men and their libraries into the West; and aside from that, the Renaissance was already beginning for other reasons)
From Obama's remarks: "It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed... And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality."
Algebra as most students know it was developed by the Greeks on Babylonian foundations (though enough innovative credit belongs to one particular Muslim for there to be an honest academic debate over who should be called 'Father of Algebra') and the so-called Arabic numeric system is actually Hindi.
The magnetic compass appeared in Christian and Muslim ships in the Mediterranean at about the same time, having either been invented locally by some unknown figure or having found their way west from China. The most advanced navigational tools of the era were developed by the Portugese. Or perhaps someone could explain to me why it was that the Muslims, who apparently invented both the compass and blue-water navigation, didn't discover America or Australia?
Mastery of pens and printing? The Ottoman Empire *banned* the printing press when it was invented (in Germany, by the way) because it didn't want its population to become educated! But of course we all know that we didn't have pens or ink in Europe until Islam came along.
As for understanding disease and how it spreads, read this: "...and because there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious diseases." That was written by a Roman in 36 BC. The first known great hospital of history (which practiced hygiene, triage, licensing of physicians, and other such medical staples for probably the first time in history) was Gindishapur, in Sassanid Persia. (pre-Islamic)
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Jun 09, 02:32:00 PM:
continued: (since when was there a character limit?)
But the last section I quote about religious tolerance is what REALLY takes the cake. That statement is such a tremendous lie I can't begin to describe it. Shari'a law literally commands that those non-Muslims who are allowed to live have a second-class position in society; Muslims cannot be enslaved, but non-Muslims can. Muslims can testify for and against one another in court, but non-Muslim testimony is not allowed. Non-Muslims are not allowed to own weaponry or serve in the armed forces (and are thereby at the utter mercy of their armed, Muslim rulers) and must pay special taxes. Other non-Muslims (Muslim heretics, and especially those who can be convincingly labeled as polytheists) are fit only for destruction. Islam is *explicitly against* religious tolerance, except insofar as you water down 'tolerance' to be 'allow them to keep breathing.' Which still doesn't extend to the mushirkeen.
As for racial equality... that can be fairly extended to the religion of Islam. (though not Arab culture) Of course, it could also be said of Christianity.
It was just a lexicon of half-truths and falsehoods designed to puff up Muslim culture into something it isn't, and has never been. Politically useful, perhaps, but still lies. Like much of what he says.
By 
, at
Tue Jun 09, 02:40:00 PM:
Pyrus: "But sure, why not add an elegy reciting Israeli inventions too. That'll even it out."
An elegy? Yikes. Are you sure that's what Israel warrants?
"elegy: ... from Greek elegeia, elegeion, from elegos song of mourning. ... 2 a: a song or poem expressing sorrow or lamentation especially for one who is dead"
I hope you were reaching for a word like "panegyric" instead.
Look, everyone knows what perfectly well what Obama meant and what TH meant. Obama is buttering up the Muslims (perhaps with good reason). They have a horrible inferiority complex (also with good reason).
TH is merely pointing out that it's all just for show, 100% BS with no real content. Islam doesn't really deserve much praise.
Israel (pop. 7M) is a tremendously skillful and creative and innovative and forward-looking society; the Islamic world (pop. c. 1,200M) is the exact opposite. I don't know how one "evens that out."
William
By Pyrus, at
Tue Jun 09, 03:16:00 PM:
William: Thanks. Actually I was reaching for "paean" but "panegyric" is better. Don't know what weird subconscious forces led my hand to "elegy"...
As to "100% BS with no real content", I'd say it's riskier than that. He's gone out on a limb to confront the Israelis with their occupation and colonization of Palestine and he's gone out on a limb to confront the Muslim world with the questionability of their democracies and the indefensibility of their anti-semitism. And at a time when he faces gargantuan domestic problems. While I agree there was no new policy in his speech, I don't think it lacked content.
As to your last point, I have to say I think those generalizations are a bit sweeping. Israel's fundamentalists are not particularly skillful, creative, innovative, or forward-looking. They're religious nutters who look indistinguishable (to me at any rate) from pentecostal nutters over here. I mention them because they put Netanyahu in power. You might be right that 1.2b Muslims are, for the most part, not skilful, creative, innovative, nor forward-looking, but I doubt it. People are pretty similar everywhere.
By , at
Tue Jun 09, 06:16:00 PM:
Pyrus: "While I agree there was no new policy in his speech, I don't think it lacked content."
I overstated my real point, which was that Obama's praise of Islamic civilization was BS lacking in real content. You're right: overall the speech certainly did have content, rather disturbing content.
William
By , at
Tue Jun 09, 07:01:00 PM:
Pyrus: "You might be right that 1.2b Muslims are, for the most part, not skilful, creative, innovative, nor forward-looking, but I doubt it."
Mmm, slightly different issue. I have no idea whether individual Muslims are creative, etc.* But looking simply at the big picture, the small black box labeled "ISRAEL" pumps out more goodies per unit volume than almost any other black box. And the vast black box labeled "ISLAM," with 200X the population, vast lands and vast oil wealth, pumps out barely a damn thing.
Where do we see "ISLAM's" creativity? Where are their skills, their human capital, their comparative advantage?
In my industry, computing, Israelis contribute far beyond their tiny numbers. We see IL vendors all the time, hawking some clever new idea. But Egyptian vendors? Saudi vendors? Is there such a thing? Allegedly IL "publishes among the most scientific papers per capita of any country in the world." I believe it.
Perhaps TH can chime in with observations from the bio-pharma industry. (As for me, I happily pop an Israel-made pill each day. I don't think I'd want to swallow so much as an aspirin from [insert Islamic country].)
Of course, Israel is not uniformly creative. I agree with you about the lard-butt ultra-ultra-religious groups. Every group has its dummies. Still, as a black box... wow.
Is there any value-creating modern-world task that today's Islamic world does really well? Perhaps there is and I am ignorant of it, in which case I'll gladly learn.
William
* They probably are, in which case Islam has the net effect of functioning as a damper that diminishes human achievement for a given potential.
By , at
Tue Jun 09, 11:24:00 PM:
Emoticons predate instant messaging by decades. Starting with "73" and "88" in morse code (1800's) through teletype machines in the 70's and up to :-) and :-( in 1982.
By , at
Sun Jun 14, 11:34:00 AM:
The BITNET university mainframe computer network had instant messaging since 1981. It was/is a built-in feature of RSCS, the IBM mainframe communications subsystem for VM. At it's peak, it had over 3000 nodes. You could send a message to any user at any node by typing, for instance:
TELL JOE AT UICVM hello
and if that user at that particular node happened to be online, whatever he was doing would be interrupted by a message that was sort of like, if my memory serves me:
11:56:03 * MSG FROM PSUVM(BOB): hello
Instant messaging existed long before personal computers.
By , at
Fri Jun 19, 04:07:00 AM:
["You seem to have utterly missed the point. That little list of accomplishments was factually wrong. Many of the things with which 'the Muslim world' is credited with accomplishing were not accomplished by Muslims at all, but by Hindus, Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians living as subjects to the caliphates, (Maimonides is a favorite example of mine) while others are simply fantasies."]
Wrong. Only some of those contributions were by Hindus, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians. It is an accepted fact that the vast majority of accomplishments in the medieval Islamic world were by Muslims. The fact that Maimonides is the only non-Muslim example you can think of speaks for itself.
["Like the 'Muslims invented soap' one that I've heard before, or 'Muslims triggered the Renaissance by translating Greek humanities into Arabic.' (The Muslims' most direct contribution to the Renaissance was their conquest of the Byzantine Empire, [finished in 1453] which resulted in an exodus of learned, Greek-speaking men and their libraries into the West; and aside from that, the Renaissance was already beginning for other reasons)"]
Wrong again. The most direct influence of the Islamic world on the European Renaissance was the Arabic-Latin translation movement, considered to be the largest translation movement in history. It began in the 11th century, peaked during the 12th and 13th cenutries, and continued well into the 18th century.
["Algebra as most students know it was developed by the Greeks on Babylonian foundations (though enough innovative credit belongs to one particular Muslim for there to be an honest academic debate over who should be called 'Father of Algebra') and the so-called Arabic numeric system is actually Hindi."]
I studied the history of mathematics at university and I can say for certain that you are wrong here. The Greeks contributed almost nothing to algebra, with the only possible exception being Diophantus, though it's doubtful he was even a Greek, since it's equally possible that he was a Babylonian or Egyptian. Nevertheless, Diophantus' Arithmetica had little resemblance to the algebra we practice today and was barely an improvement on the algebraic methods used by the Babylonians 2000 years before him.
The algebra we practice today began with Al-Khwarizmi's Al-Jabr. However, he wasn't the only Muslim mathematician who contributed to the subject as you seem to be implying, but only the beginning in a line of innovative Muslim mathematicians who, over the next few centuries, took algebra to far greater heights.
["The magnetic compass appeared in Christian and Muslim ships in the Mediterranean at about the same time, having either been invented locally by some unknown figure or having found their way west from China. The most advanced navigational tools of the era were developed by the Portugese. Or perhaps someone could explain to me why it was that the Muslims, who apparently invented both the compass and blue-water navigation, didn't discover America or Australia?"]
While I agree that the compass was not invented in the Islamic world (that credit belongs to China), you are wrong about the Portuguese. The Spaniards and Portuguese rarely ever invented any of their own navigational technology, but simply relied on what was left behind by their Muslim predecessors. For their trans-Atlantic journeys, the Spaniards and Portuguese were using the same tools and transport the Muslims had used for their journeys across the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean.
["Mastery of pens and printing? The Ottoman Empire *banned* the printing press when it was invented (in Germany, by the way) because it didn't want its population to become educated! But of course we all know that we didn't have pens or ink in Europe until Islam came along."]
Although I agree that the Islamic world does not deserve credit for printing (again, that credit belongs to the Chinese, not Europeans), it is an accepted fact that the fountain pen was invented in the Islamic world, which is obviously what Obama was referring to.
By , at
Fri Jun 19, 04:13:00 AM:
["As for understanding disease and how it spreads, read this: "...and because there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious diseases." That was written by a Roman in 36 BC. The first known great hospital of history (which practiced hygiene, triage, licensing of physicians, and other such medical staples for probably the first time in history) was Gindishapur, in Sassanid Persia. (pre-Islamic)"]
That Roman quote is not referring to what we would today call bacteria, but to small supernatural creatures that may cause disease. Similar statements were also made by Muslim physicians, but that is not what Obama was referring to. What he was referring to was the discovery of the contagious nature of infectious disease and the introduction of quarantine methods to limit their spread, both of which were first described by Muslim physicians, particularly by Avicenna in his "Canon of Medicine", which was a standard textbook of medicine at European universities well into the 19th century.
As for the hospitals, some of the facilities you mentioned (especially the licencing of physicians) did not exist in pre-Islamic Persia. While the "Bimaristan" institution did originate from pre-Islamic Persia, it was only during the "Islamic Golden Age" that the Bimaristan hospitals advanced to the point of having most of the facilities now associated with modern-day hospitals.
