A Thought Experiment
In the opening session of the Aspen Ideas Festival, Atlantic owner David Bradley gave a funny, flattering talk in which he cribbed from Aspen Institute president Walter Isaacson's new book on Einstein
The example made me wonder, Would Einstein have developed his theory if trains--or some other rapid form of transportation--hadn't been invented? Or was the familiar technology of high-speed travel essential to the intuitive leap? We usually think of technology driving science through new tools like Galileo's telescope or the electron microscope. But by changing the everyday background in which science is done, technologies can also create new sources of scientific inspiration.