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From the RooshV Forum:
I constantly get the vibe from people that they think our technology is skyrocketing, that we're living in a new tech age, "where was all this ten years ago?!" etc.
But I disagree with this assessment of our technology. It has made steady improvements in one specific space: software and electronic hardware. That is all. On top of that, the improvements on the hardware have not even been ground breaking. GPS is a ground-breaking invention. Smaller screens are not: they are just an incremental improvement.
Smartphones are merely the result of incremental improvements in the size and quality of electronic components. The only breakthroughs involved are ages old. The invention of the transistor, the laser, etc. The existence of google, facebook, uber, and so on, are merely inevitable "new applications" stemming from these improvements. They are not breakthroughs, they are merely improvements and combinations upon the telephone, the directory, and the taxi.
In my opinion, technology as a whole is borderline stagnant.
A list of why technology is still shit:
The posting goes on to list examples of incremental, rather than breakthrough, changes in the areas of:
- Electronics & Machines
- Energy
- Medicine
- Clothes
- Food
- Finance
Have we really stagnated? Have we already found all of the "low-hanging fruit", so new breakthroughs are harder to find? Maybe there is greater emphasis on changes that are immediately able to be commercialized and less emphasis on basic research?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @04:59AM (3 children)
Evolution is incremental. We differ from fish in important ways, and even more so from our single celled ancestors.
For some reason, the fact that our culture out paces evolution by several orders of magnitude might not seem fast to everyone, but our progress looks blindly fast to me.
100 years ago, almost nothing in in my life could even be dreamed of. The same is not true between 100 and 200 years ago.
The concept of engineered systems that process information isn't going to be outdated by some new tech (its a very old concept), however incremental improvements to it could easily to things we could never imagine, and we seem to be heading there.
Even the transistor was not really new when it was glorified, and when popularized didn't cause non-incremental change. History glorifies things that took years as instants, but 100 years from now, the rise of social media will look faster than the rise of the transistor, and the rise of the smartphone faster than that of the computer.
I fail to see how a military GPS system is more revolutionary than everyone having access to that and all the worlds information from their pocket. Change is continuous, and its faster now than ever.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @05:22AM (2 children)
Social media and the smartphone are more about marketing than technology.
We've had social media for at least ~30 years. The difference is that now companies have realized consumers are idiots when it comes to protecting their personal information and so this exploitation has created a sort of modern day gold rush as companies compete to mine the most data from ignorant, though complicit, users. Back in the day companies were held back more by ethics. Quoting [businessinsider.com] Mark Zuckerberg:
The only revolution came in companies realizing how easy it was to monetize people and thus using effective marketing to start herding the Eternal September [wikipedia.org] crowd into these outlets. And it's hardly anything worth praising. It's mostly people ring fencing themselves off into echo chambers, desperately image crafting to try to make their lives seem less pathetic (though nobody cares as they're too busy doing the same things themselves), and then vulturous marketers swarming about the whole charade milking everybody for all their worth.
...is it any wonder I'm posting on a more niche text-only message board with curated shares under an anonymous account?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 29 2017, @09:22AM
Which just goes to show what kind of person Zuck is and how people act. Deplorable at both ends. Now that the corporation forces themselves onto others they will get the backlash from people that can see through the bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @12:12PM
That's deep man. Have an upvote.