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Has the Rate of Technical Progress Slowed?
Amiga Trombone writes "An article in the IEEE Spectrum argues that the rate of technological progress has slowed in the last 50 years. While there have been advances in areas such as computers, communications and medicine, etc., the author points out that these advances have largely been incremental rather than revolutionary. He contrasts the progress made within the life-span of his grandmother (1880-1960) with that in his own (1956-present). Having been born the year after the author, I've noticed this, too. While certainly we've produced some useful refinements, little of the technology available today would have surprised me much had I been able to encounter it in 1969. While some of it has been implemented in surprising ways, the technology itself had largely been anticipated."
Uh, the patent term is 20 years.
You mean the way it does with small single-engine airplanes today? In small general aviation craft, an engine failure, electrical failure, or mechanical failure is frequently a serious emergency, with potentially fatal consequences. However, unless you're doing something seriously stupid, a competent pilot is very likely to survive a rather large subset of such failures -- basically anything excluding "wings fall off".
To extend your logical argument, then we don't need to develop flying cars --- we already have them. They're called "single-engine airplanes". Put some road wheels on them and you're done.
However, in practice the concepts are quite different. The canonical "flying car" is expected to be much smaller and maneuverable than an airplane, piloted by a non-expert, capable of flying in a much more crowded environment, and most importantly should not require the use of long runways (ideally it should have VTOL capability). Unfortunately, it's precisely these characteristics that militate against the safety characteristics you describe.
And even without those extreme requirements, small airplanes still get in plenty of trouble.