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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.
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
"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
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.
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