> On Mar 30, 2016, at 3:52 PM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
>
> (Or maybe the TU just hasn't  made it into a position analogous to the '20th century'  yet? Maybe it never will? Maybe it will, eventually?)

Here’s the thing. The OTU == 18th Century referred pretty much to one single thing: communications moved at the speed of physical travel. News, orders, secret messages, et al don’t get there until a ship actually travels to the destination.

This has significant implications about how military operations work, fleet doctrine, multi-world governance, etc etc etc.

It didn’t mean merchants were loading bales of cotton, casks of nails and bundles of sailcloth into the hold of their ship in large cargo nets. Duh they used standardized containers like anyone else in the 21st, 23rd or 24th century. <http://www.worldshipping.org/about-the-industry/history-of-containerization>

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs