Socrates (AKA Nikola Danaylov) has a rare interview with mathematician, science fiction writer and speculative futurist Virnor Vinge. Vinge articulates the difference between the Singularity and previous technical change thus: You could explain the internet or intercontinental jet travel to someone from an earlier phase of technological history Mark Twain or Ghengis. Explaining the post-singularity dispensation to a ‘human’ human would be like explaining typewriters to a goldfish.
Vinge reveals that he’s dusting off the sequel to his sublime posthuman space opera, A Fire upon the Deep. It’s called Children of the Sky.
enemyindustry 
Useful post! I’ve just pre-ordered Children of the Sky, and will listen to the interview when I get home.
Thanks for the post Richard!
Laughs, I will accept that its possible that Mark Twain might understand this as a consequence of his experience of steam engines… But explaining jet engines to Genghis or worse a bronze age person… no simply wrong.
Hi
Well, explaining jet engines to Genghis might be inadvisable and imprudent for all sorts of reasons, but are you suggesting that a bronze age person would be cognitively ill-equipped to grasp jet propulsion? I know at least one literature professor who claims to understand it (no names).