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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."
Where is my flying car?
Honestly, in a few ways we might be considered to be going backwards:
I have seen the end of supersonic passenger aircraft (for the time being, with no resumption in sight).
The last time man was on the moon was before I was born.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Not much more to say really, things are slowing down, improvements to products are minimal.
Actual, genuine newfangled technology what is there? Everything is an iteration upon an iteration.
We still use the microwave, we still use the freezer, the cooktop, the oven, we mostly use the combustion engine, we still mostly use steam for power plants, computers have gotten faster and we have LCD's now but nothing huge has hapenned, we don't have anti-gravity, we don't have teleportation, we can't change one thing in to another (easily), medically we still aren't growing replacement bodies.
Yes things have gotten better but I haven't seen a huge revoloutionary change to be honest in my lifetime, maybe the mobile phone I guess.
What if the author had found data on inventions that failed? Would the author see a huge amount in the lifetime of his grandmother (if those records exist) and very few during his own lifetime (per capita in both time periods)?
Sometimes it feels like for every one hobby project I take on there are nine more that die at some point in development. Perhaps today we bet on sure things -- like incremental developments on things already existing -- instead of investing our time in risky ventures? Possibly because development and production of an idea is a costly venture with many people needed along the way. It gets harder to be a one stop shop as we're trained to be specialized and therefore our failures become more costly. Our economic system has evolved to reward only those that succeed and really really punish those that don't.
Probably not an adequate explanation but may explain part of it.
My work here is dung.
I can't believe a tech magazine has gone OUT OF ITS WAY to make this article practically unreadable.
Nothing works - Single page view still shows me about 65% page-width of sidebar, there is no print view to speak of, only a "Print" option that I could use to make a PDF, except even that is too shittily formatted to read, and for some reason the text column decides it's a good idea to get even narrower at some point after the insanely difficult-to-decipher timeline image. Of which a convenient PDF download is linked to, which is THREE FRAKKIN MEGABYTES and still a total disaster to read.
Is this some sort of test about who RTFA and who doesn't?
Well, even TFA is one meandering, rambling muse better suited for a blog, which is a real pity, as the writer Alfred Nordmann has two reasonably well written essays up on his site. *sigh* Some people are just better at papers than articles with word-limits.
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And to some extent, there's no harm in asking the same question for copyright and trademark laws respectively.
And don't lump them all together in a reply - specify why this is (not) the case for the three subjects.
Answering this question from the viewpoint of IT, CS or electronics in general, yes, I have the same feeling.
However, if you look at other sciences, like biology, there's an amazing evolution of technologies, methodologies and revolutionizing new insights that are going to change the world around is, possibly in more disruptive ways than computers have. If the 20th century is the century of computers, we're still strongly believing that the 21st century will see (and is seeing) a lot of revolutions in biology.
So if you feel, like me, that CS is dead and still want to go on a technological quest, try something else.
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
I also don't think the implications of the instant copy and transfer of information were predicted or understood. The closest we came to predicting 2009 back then was the fear that automation would close our factories and cost us jobs. Nobody saw that the ability to copy or transfer information would transform society the way it has, from the slow collapse of the music industry to the outsourcing of information jobs.
John
"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. I...n Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly. " - harry lime, the third man
fifteen jugglers, five believers
The accomplishments are still there in other subjects - genetics, biology, materials science, manufacturing. For example, the quality of automobiles is tremendously improved from 50 years ago. If you equate technology with computing, that is probably a mistake. If it is just that computing is important to you, take some solace in the quality of operating systems, the pervasive nature of computing that gives rise to other improvements, the quality of electronic networking components, the rise of internet communications and social sites, the rise of the open-source movement, the MUCH better software development scenarios and languages, etc.
That said, we have allowed technological imperialism to move us away from education (as mentioned above). If we insist on cleanliness in the environment, then the jobs go to other countries. If we do not fund research, other countries send their best and brightest here to be educated. Then they go back and make improvements in their own countries.
My pissantly nature puts some of the change in funding, education, and attitude at the hands of accountants. If they were still struggling with green eyeshades and pencils, they would not have insisted on everything having the same, bland, vanilla profit structure. Some improvements require investment. Look at the benefits (as mentioned above) that came out of pure research in the cold war years. You cannot do that now, given the fight for government funds from all quarters. So, we suffer the results. America has changed.
Communications ("information") technology has been the biggest change in the last twenty years. Internet, cell phones, gps, wireless...none of this existed (to any significant degree) in the 1980s. Also, this list of patents by calendar year indicates that inventiveness, at least as measured by pursuit of IP protection, has a trend of increasing annually.
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.
From a technology viewpoint, we -- the tech leaders of the world, from whatever country -- seem to be focused on iterative improvements more than anything else.
Following the money trail, this almost certainly goes back to the people holding the purse strings and their (relatively) myopic, short-term desire to bet only on a sure thing. Game-changing technology isn't researched and brought into production because the monetary risk is too high for the short term. The focus is simply on "shipping" incremental improvements to existing tech sooner to keep the money flowing and the budget guys happy.
This is pretty sad, for several reasons. Sticking to an always-incremental approach trains people to accept that approach as normal. Minor improvements are lauded as fantastic innovations. Thinking "outside the box" falls by the wayside and is considered radical. Only goals that can be met in the short term are actually set. And "the bar" drops lower and lower.
I know full well that there is some excellent research and science going on around the world, and it's contributing to our general knowledge every day. That's fantastic. What we need, however, is more innovating applications of that technology.
Also, a lot of technological advances, as always, are war- and government-centered and shrouded in secrecy. Although predicted in 1948, more than the stipulated 50 years ago, Big Brother has become a reality in the NSA office of the San Francisco AT&T building. GPS, Tomahawks, and Predators make destruction of arbitrarily-specified buildings and infrastructure available at the touch of a button. The cat ia out of the bag now regarding the Google sub-campus of the NASA Ames campus, which is known for its Artificial Intelligence research -- they have now named it the Singularity University -- who knows how much progress they've made thus far and whether intermediate results are helping in the Big Brother effort. It's not common knowledge yet, but the five-century tradition of subjugating the world through a surface navy has ended. Surface ships, including and especially aircraft carriers, are obsolete, being vulnerable to hypersonic surface-skimming missiles. The stipulated 50 years ago, battleships were still a hot thing.
This IEEE Spectrum piece is so bad that it not only doesn't recognize these recent and often secret game-changing innovations, it failed to mention the past innovation with the greatest societal impact: the S-Bend toilet drainpipe, which allowed indoor toilets without constantly emanating odors.
Lego is experiencing a new golden age at the moment, and rather than catering to lowest common denominator, they offer products in just about every category imaginable now. Want crazy head-wrecking technic constructions? They're there. Amazing large models and sculptures for adult builders? Brick-collection sets that come with three suggested models? Brick buckets? Parts? City/Space/Castle sets that we would have gone berserk over as kids? Lego robotics? Popular culture done in Lego? (for all the criticism of price or specialised parts - remember that some of us dreamed of such a thing as kids - Star Wars in Lego? It was the stuff of fantasy!)
Recent themed sets (i.e. not just brick buckets) have acheived a good balance of small/large bricks, plates, slope/roof pieces, special parts and colours. Just about all ordinary Lego parts (i.e. not Bionicle) have quite a variety of uses - and even many special purpose parts are fairly generic and have had careful geometry design to allow cunning combination with other Lego parts.
Please before repeating this "in my day" stuff about Lego, actually look at what Lego offer today on shop.lego.com, and what they offered in your day (check e.g. brickset.com). The likes of what you had in your day is still there, and vast plethora of choices beyond that too. As an adult Lego builder I can assure you that Lego has never been better - although quality of parts is perhaps not as good as 1980s (better than earlier than that though) but it is also cheaper than ever and in many ways more versatile. The size of set that would have been $20 back in the day, is $20 today when $20 is worth a lot less.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
RIP SF Age, but you're right no flying cars, except Trek Transporters won't happen either.
Instead of a flying car, I'd almost see a "3d Subway". There operators run the grid. Essentially, Subway cars don't crash.
In all seriousness, getting to work would be like solving a rubik's puzzle. (up/left/forward/down/forward/left/forward)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If you want more advances, call your congressman and tell them that you want increased funding to the NSF, NIH, NIST, DOE, and NASA for basic research. Then sit back ten or twenty years.
Because it will take Congress ten or twenty years to pass a bill that increases funding to the NSF, NIH, NIST, DOE, and NASA. Let's face it. Progess has slowed because it takes an act of Congress to perform an act of Congress.
Actually progress has slowed because we haven't discovered any new energy sources since fission. We keep talkiing about fusion, but nobody's made it happen. When we find a powerful new energy source, technological progress will boom.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Maybe because I actually work in research (micro and nanotechnology), I don't know why I am one of the few that disagrees that innovation is slowing down. In any case, this is my argument: nanotechknology is booming, both fundamental research as well as applied. 10-15 years ago we had no clue about carbon nanotubes - while now we have various companies developing and even producing (I am not supposed to tell you this) TV displays based on CNTs, as well as fuel cells and composite materials. There is a lot of research in using CNTs for microsensors, and for medical applications. Generally, our knowledge of material science has grown geometrically in the last 10 years, and all sorts of esotheric substances are being produced in labs all around the world. Even using DNA as a building block. 10 years ago we had barely any idea of stuff like excitons and plasmons, while nowadays these are household terms in chemistry and physics. In fact, we have chemical detectors that function based on plasmons. We have NCT and graphene transistors. We have non-carbon nanostructures, all sorts of self-assembled nanomachines (complex chemical molecules able to perform certain mechanical tasks). We have people initiating growth of neurons on carbon nanotube mats - how fucking cool is that? Being able to regenerate part of your brain tissue?
As you can see, my argument is just an overview of a small fraction of scientific research and technology - but even that, I think, is enough to refute the notion that development has slowed down.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
1. Technology of the 1970's can provide enough food and shelter for the entire world. However, we cannot employ the entire world in the production of food and shelter, because at some point we have all the food and shelter we need and thus people become unemployable again.
So there is no demand for anything but food and shelter? All human beings presently produce nothing but food and shelter? I want a lot more stuff besides food and shelter, and I'm willing to work to pay for it. I don't want to live in a welfare state, I've seen the average welfare recipient.
The obvious solution of "making basic stuff for no cost to consumers" would drastically undermine the economic pyramid, so that cannot be pursued.
Who is going to make the basic stuff for no cost to consumers for free. Even if you build robots that can do all the work, someone still has to design, build, and maintain them. Why should those people have to work when nobody else does?
Therefore, the only way to maintain the existing economic pyramid is to slow down the pace of technology until such time as other social controls (e.g. consumer debt) can become more effective.
And who exactly made the decision to slow down the pace? How did they communicate this decision, in a binding way to everyone else? How do they prevent people not directly under their control from innovating themselves? Why did they open of vast information sources like the Internet, and make them searchable, if they are trying to impede progress?
Call this is the Conspiracy Theory version of why we don't develop technology advanced enough such that we no longer need to work for The Man.
Bullshit is a synonym for conspiracy in this case.
2. Globalization's "race to the bottom" has produced a business culture that values short-term profits over long-term progress, such that it makes more economic sense to squeeze a little more money out of what we have than take the risk of shooting for something much better.
Business never valued progress. It isn't a business goal. Businesses promote progress, but don't value it. It's always been about the profit. That's not to say that progress doesn't pay, there wouldn't be so many private venture capital firms if progress didn't pay, and they wouldn't be making investments in risky things like green tech.
Thus it is more profitable to make things last just until the manufacturer's warranty runs out than as long as possible, partly due to existing infrastructure but also largely due to consumer preferences for newer-is-better (who still wants power tools from the 1950's even if they continue to work well?).
Newer generally is better. The flip side of that is, sometimes things don't need to last forever. I was talking to an engineer that was involved in the construction of a highway once, and asked why only a portion of it was concrete, since concrete lasts much longer. He explained that before they construct highways, they study the area to see what the future growth will be like. The area that is concrete has a well understood growth chart, and was actually wider than strictly necessary so two additional lanes in each direction could be opened by repainting the lines. It made sense in that area to build a highway that would last fifty years. In the other areas, a smaller highway would do for the time being, and area expansion was unsure. Because of this, it was paved with asphalt. If the road were built to last 50 years, but it had to be expanded or rebuilt in 10 or 20, then it was originally far overbuilt, and the money would be wasted. With consumer electronics in particular, it doesn't make sense to make things last longer than there practical lifespan. Look at MP3 players from 10 years ago, then look at players today. It doesn't make sen
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
I agree with you, and your post inspired a thought in my mind.
In 1944 My father was born. He met his father, a soldier who was away at war, for the first time in 1946.
A year and a half ago, I was away at war. My son was born while I was supposed to be several states away at pre-deployment training. Thanks to our modern technology, I was granted a pass(no tech there), hopped a plane, (for $200 round trip) and was home for the birth of my son.
I then was able to follow the first year of his life, via almost daily photo and video updates, and multiple web-cam sessions per week via the Internet.
All this was made possible with two $600 laptops, two $50 webcams, and roughly $150 a month for the two internet connections. My ISP in Afghanistan was $100 a month for sufficient speed to web-cam. I was working over a satellite internet connection, talking real time with my wife and two boys (okay so the baby wasn't doing much talking), from the other side of this planet (11 and a half hour time difference).
Just a few years prior (2001 and 2002-03), on deployments to the Balkans I was able to email, and call home via the military's phone system, but a video call was out of the question, I had limited access to a VTC system but my family had no such access. And blogging tools for an easy location to post all the pictures of family were no where near as easy to use. I posted pictures to a webpage hosted on the family server. I had to know html to update that page. Now it's point and click and upload to blogspot. And my wife could even do it while wrestling with a toddler and an infant. (She told me to add that factoid).
The premise of this article is greatly flawed.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
And sometimes people blame "anti-competitive practices" when there's actually a valid reason why a product might fail:
- Flying cars - Costs a lot to buy, costs a lot to fuel, requires space for takeoffs/landings. Also in today's "green" climate replacing your 35 mpg car with a 5 mpg flying car would be considered a backwards move.
- EV cars - Costs a lot to buy, is cheaper to fuel, but only goes ~100 miles so people don't want it. People want freedom to make 200-300 mile weekend trips to the beach or mountains or grandma's house.
- Tram/elevated trains - Inconvenient. A car "picks you up" right outside your house; a tram doesn't.
- Betamax - Its inventor Sony claimed it had better video quality, but its initial 1 hour/tape limit was not as good as VHS' 2 or 4 hour ability. Consumers chose VHS. We see the same with iPods where people are turning their backs on high-quality CDs or DVD-Audio, because they'd rather squeeze songs at barely-audible quality to fit inside their tiny MP3 player.
- Steam engine - Although invented by a Greek circa 100 A.D., the roman empire already had cheap slaves to do all the work, so it was viewed by citizens as a toy, not something to replace the status quo.
There are a few cases where a company uses it monopoly to squash an invention, as RCA did when they purchased the patent to FM in the 1930s and then shelved it to protect their already-existing AM monopoly, but these cases are rare. In most cases products fail because consumers *choose* to make them fail.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"Flight" was invented by two bicycle repairmen in their spare time. The flight projects the government funded were all huge failures. Just FYI.
Comment of the year
When you look back in history say your Grandmothers life. You have historical blinders (We look at advancements in periods of decades, and get to see things by choosing select locations).
Electricity took roughly 50-75 years to be deployed and common across all american households espectially in rural areas.
The Telephone the same thing. Not until the late 50's were the inventions made 50 years ago become commonplace even in rural areas.
How long did we just have the 3 main TV stations CBS, ABC, NBC. I remember having and being able to buy B&W TVs well into the 90's.
We are less interested in Mechanical advances and more into information advances.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
but when you have companies like Microsoft funding university research which contain strings requiring them to use Microsoft tools and platform, limits exist. Maybe there are fewer unrestricted investments being made. Thinking of how the OLPC project went, maybe there are too many business interests who pounce on new projects to stall them so they don't become a threat? We know from court documents that most of what comes out of Microsoft is specifically designed to offset a threat so motivation becomes mediocre once that threat is curtailed. For instance, DirectX/3D was created to offset the threat of OpenGL in the early 90s. Windows CE to offset the threat of the PalmOS in the mid 90s. Internet Explorer to offset the threat of Netscape Navigator in the late 90s. Microsoft .NET to offset the threat of Java, Xbox to offset Sony PlayStation. I don't think you really see much innovation going on in any of these areas once they get the results they wanted. For one, they don't need to be profitable in any of those areas as long as have keep getting billions in profits from Windows every year.
Look at GM also, they put together a team which built a pretty nice EV in the 90s called the EV1 but after the oil industry took over the office of the Presidency in 2001, they dismantled and destroyed that technology and even sold the patent rights to the battery technology used in that car to the oil industry. In the early 2000s they publicly declared that hybrids and EVs were bad for the consumers and that hydrogen was the future. All the while, they ere taking billions from the US government/oil industry to spend on hydrogen vaporware and marketing.
Making stuff cheaper once it's on the market has always been part of every businesses when there is a competitive force available to pressure efficiency on them to continue being profitable. When those pressures are removed the drive to better, faster, cheaper goes out the window.
The patent issue is getting pretty bad also but it's more of a recent thing. Companies like Microsoft didn't worry about patents in the 80s and 90s because they know that when they took away the patent owners income, there'd be little left after the long court battle to fight with. Then, paying out a hundred million or less to the shell company remaining was cheap compared to letting someone else have any kind of ownership or control over Microsoft and the developers it needs to maintain their market position. I'm thinking of Wang for example.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It's easy to minimize any technological change. When it's first invented in year X: "that's useless, it's too expensive/impractical/complex for normal people". In year X+n when it's become cheap and practical: "so what, we had that back in X".
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.