There is also the fact that mathematics isn't in it. It's a list of abstract non-physical technologies that includes writing and software and excludes mathematics. I am not sure whether money should or should not be there (trade and value-store are both pretty transformative concepts for sure). But the idea of encoding the rules of behavior of the world in a form amenable to direct manipulation over those same rules seems to either be missing (math), or presented as a 21st century discovery (software).

I was comfortable with the notion. It seems to me that "soft technologies" are the ones that cause ideas and thoughts to be materialized in the world. The other technologies seem to be physical transformations of matter and energy.

What I'm really curious about is how to best consume these. I suppose a mailing list would be the norm, but I'd like to see them automatically land in Instapaper or Pocket. I'll have to see if there's a way already.

"What I'm really curious about is how to best consume these. I suppose a mailing list would be the norm, but I'd like to see them automatically land in Instapaper or Pocket. I'll have to see if there's a way already."

It was a little laborious, but I went through each essay and used dotEPUB (http://dotepub.com/) to convert it to epub, then transferred to my ereader manually.

I considered looking for a more automated solution, before realising that it would take more time looking for a solution than just manually doing it.

Similarly for pocket I imagine with the frequency these are coming out it would be easiest to simply manually add each essay to pocket.

here is the script that I use for doing this: https://gist.github.com/ilyakava/47aedca7bc39483d7a94

All you have to do is input a txt file of links, in this case: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=8PTFJ2x4

Here is the output epub for all to enjoy: http://cl.ly/022V1Y1t2I24

In cases when I care about formatting/metadata, I might use pandoc to merge all the \d+.html files, regex or edit, and then use pandoc to output *epub

I've deleted some "Share this" and such stuff if epub and it's available here – https://www.dropbox.com/s/ws3xakwcd6dqbss/Breaking%20Smart%2...

There are many things that cause ideas and thoughts to be materialized in the world. Money is not one of them. It's simply a crude approximation of trust.

He defines them right here:

And only two of these, written language and money, were soft technologies: seemingly ephemeral, but capable of being embodied in a variety of specific physical forms.

"Seemingly ephemeral" but not really, is not a particularly good definition. A drawing fits his definition. Or a dance.

The idea makes a decent amount of sense (technologies with no fixed physical component), it just that the list of what counts is completely FUBAR.

For example: math, the OODA loop, indexing, laws, logistics (ex siege warfare, "never start a land war in asia"), contracts, empire / political hierarchy, etc.

My interpretation is that they are technologies that embody/manipulate information, as opposed to matter or energy. And, whether you agree or not, the argument being made is that information technologies are different in fundamental ways than matter or energy technologies.