ciphergoth comments on The Sacred Mundane - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 March 2009 09:53AM

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Comment author: pre 25 March 2009 08:54:12PM 4 points [-]

Do people feel awe at the Internet?

Totally. The communications network is the biggest machine ever built, it's parts are all replaceable without damaging the whole. Maybe you're too young to remember a time before it, but I found it at university nearly two decades ago and I was certainly awestruck.

Toilets?

Not so much. But then I did see a documentry about the building of the London sewerage system, the way the rivers were all paved over and turned into underground tunnels, connected by miles upon miles of underground canals. Which has lasted for a couple of hundred years!

A toilet might not be a massive engineering feat, but the sewer system in a whole city sure is.

Comment author: ciphergoth 26 March 2009 02:34:06PM *  2 points [-]

Joseph Bazalgette, engineer of the London sewers, is a real hero! Curiously, his great-great-grandson Peter Bazalgette produces sewage for a living.