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posted by martyb on Monday May 29 2017, @03:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-all-gone-to-bits dept.

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?

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by anotherblackhat on Monday May 29 2017, @02:46PM (2 children)

    by anotherblackhat (4722) on Monday May 29 2017, @02:46PM (#517154)

    LEDs have existed for over 100 years, and have been gradually improving ever since.
    In the 70s, 80s, and 90s LED still weren't as efficient as incandescent bulbs.
    But they kept on gradually improving and now they're vastly more efficient.
    We noticed the "revolution" in lighting when the price dropped below a certain threshold, but it wasn't a breakthrough, it was just steady progress.

    Most of us are still using gas powered cars.
    Electric cars have been steadily improving, thanks mostly to improvements in battery technology.
    There isn't going to be a demarcation point for ICE cars, they're just going to slowly fade into the background as more and more people drive electric.
    But /in hindsight/ that slow steady improvement is going to look like a revolution.

    If the lifetime of an automobile tire improves 3% a year it won't seem like much, but eventually, that too will seem like a "revolution".

    It only looks like non-electronic technology isn't improving because electronic technology is improving so fast.

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  • (Score: 2) by ese002 on Monday May 29 2017, @06:28PM (1 child)

    by ese002 (5306) on Monday May 29 2017, @06:28PM (#517253)

    LEDs have existed for over 100 years, and have been gradually improving ever since.
    In the 70s, 80s, and 90s LED still weren't as efficient as incandescent bulbs.
    But they kept on gradually improving and now they're vastly more efficient.
    We noticed the "revolution" in lighting when the price dropped below a certain threshold, but it wasn't a breakthrough, it was just steady progress.

    Negative. For decades we had red, amber, and green LED's. They were handy for indicator lights but you could not make a display out of them and they were useless for general lighting.

    That changed in 1994 with the first practical blue LED. Suddenly full colour displays became possible. Blue LED's lead to UV led's that could be married with a phosphor to produce broad spectrum light. LED lighting was born. By 2001, LED's were displacing halogen bulbs in high end flash lights. They were already much more efficient than incandescent. I think maybe you are thinking about florescent. It did take a while for LED's to surpass florescent efficiency.

    Blue and UV LED's were expensive at first but because their utility was clear, it opened the floodgates for investments into research to bring the cost down. That part was indeed incremental but none of it would have happened without the blue LED.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @07:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @07:27PM (#517280)

      I agree with the article, and I've been saying that stuff for years.

      Yep, blue LEDs are one of very few in the past 50 years. The FET was "invented" in 1926, but not built until 1947. In the 1950s and 1960s "solid state" - transistors and ICs - were developed, and we're still using that tech- refined, shrunk, etc.

      The very few things I can think of that have changed tech, etc., in the past 40 years are:

      1) Blue LED
      2) GaAs FET (aka Gas FET)
      3) Li-Ion batteries
      4) rare-earth magnets

      Quantum computing is very interesting too...