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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: 3, Interesting) by Z-A,z-a,01234 on Monday May 29 2017, @08:16AM (1 child)
The guy is not the only one to observe this, for example:
Tom Murphy has this post https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2015/09/you-call-this-progress/ [ucsd.edu]
John Graham-Cumming observed that most enabler technologies were invented in the 50s through early 80s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVZxkFAIziA [youtube.com]
I think there are 3 reasons behind this:
1. economic system - encourages optimization based on maximizing the profit margin and the pressure to constantly have "growth" gave us planed obsolescence. It is considered "normal" to buy something today that will break in the few weeks after the warranty expired (if it lasts that long). It is normal to throw away a perfectly good item just because some 5c piece is not replaceable and other parts cannot be upgraded.
2. computing in general - as an industry we've stagnated completely. I'll tip my hat for Watson and DeepMind - both being remarkable AI developments. Everybody else is doing the same shit over and over again because they need to release this year (see 1.). It used to be C, then C++, now CEF and JS, tomorrow it'll be just an app. If Windows releases a new version the whole world needs to adjust their programs to make sure they still work. If an old OS version is retired, the ones still using it are facing a very difficult choice. Linux got systemd which caused devuan - nobody is immune.
3. science is now a business as funding is constantly shrinking. The publish or die strategy obviously backfired. There are virtually no negative results being published, reproducing some results also has a hard time getting published. So it's becoming more and more difficult to move forward on such a shaky base.
See here: http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970 [nature.com]
e.g. Xerox PARC accomplishments listed here are from the first decade of operation and according to Alan Kay for ~$40 mil in today's money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_%28company%29 [wikipedia.org]
The original team had a contract that prevented Xerox from interfering with the team for the first 5 years or so. More details on that here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbwOPzxuJ0s [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by kaszz on Monday May 29 2017, @09:16AM
Reminds me of..
Excerpt from IEEE spectrum [ieee.org] in 1985:
Death by MBA is still a thing..