Has the Rate of Technical Progress Slowed? 712
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."
Flying Car (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I believe so yes, specifically the last 5 years. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Are Failures More Costly Today? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Flying Car (Score:5, Interesting)
Holy unreadability, Batman! (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing works - Single page view [ieee.org] 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 [uni-bielefeld.de]. *sigh* Some people are just better at papers than articles with word-limits.
Re:Flying Car (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention a flying car that can fail safe, so that a mechanical mishap or minor accident doesn't prove invariably fatal from, ya know, falling out of the sky.
Re:If it has, has patent law had an effect on this (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:Flying Car (Score:5, Interesting)
Though there's this whole class of accidents which come about when a 3rd dimension is involved. "Stalled vehicle on highway, traffic backed up for ten miles, delayed for fifty miles, more minor accidents as a result of the start and stop flow" becomes "Stalled vehicle on highway, traffic continues to move smoothly. Hundreds dead as stalled vehicle crashes into St Baby Fluffy Kitten's home for dyslexic cute animals during a field trip from the Orphanage For The Quite Uninteresting But Still Adorable (OFQUBSA)"
Computers have stopped. Biology has not. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Maybe we have changed (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:WAR, what is it good for? (Score:4, Interesting)
It has not changed (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Article has it wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Form of agile development (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Flying Car (Score:5, Interesting)
By 1914, we had sheduled international flights all across Europe and cheap Ford cars, phones, BBC radio, etc".
He observed that besides the technology content of the changes, there was a significant psychological factor:
By 1914, 1898 was "the last century" - he went on to predict that by 2014, 1998 would be "the last millenium" and things would seem even more old-fashioned. Of course we cannot know the future, but we also cannot know what is currently being developed behind closed doors. Invention is never at a steady pace - and many inventions may come in a single year after five years of no excitement.
Despite that, there might be a problem:
All current computers are just re-implementations of the PDP11 archictecture with minor improvements.
The iPhone is just a smaller version of the Memex predicted by Vannevar Bush [wikipedia.org]
Necessity is the mother of all Frank Zappas. Maybe we don't actually need any more stuff! We need the stuff we have to work better! There is enough food, housing and porn to go round! The main thing we really do need is a better system of government.
AT&T "You Will" (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [google.com] of the NASA Ames campus, which is known for its Artificial Intelligence research -- they have now named it the Singularity University [bizjournals.com] -- 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.
Re:Flying Car (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think progress has slowed down then watch a 50 year old TV show and just
observe. Note every time you think how the characters could have used some bit
of technology that we take for granted to their advantage.
It's as stark as the difference between 1914 and 1898. You've just gotten used to it.
It's not that progress isn't happening. You're just taking it for granted.
A tech revolution doesn't seem quite so disruptive anymore.
Re:Flying Car (Score:4, Interesting)
I would argue that the same idiots who use rear view mirrors to apply makeup, never check the oil, and can't tell that a tire is flat will just find new ways to kill people while texting on their cellphone or playing the newest popular game on their laptop.
Has history taught us nothing? Morons who couldn't walk and chew bubblegum were handed car keys, and the result was carnage. Today, you wish to see the grandsons and granddaughters of those same morons zipping through the sky over your house?
I'm probably talking to one of those grandsons.....
Re:Two reasons (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Flying Car (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Flying Cars (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
Re:Flying Car (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention a flying car that can fail safe, so that a mechanical mishap or minor accident doesn't prove invariably fatal from, ya know, falling out of the sky.
You mean the way it does with small single-engine airplanes today?
In small general aviation craft, an engine failure, electrical failure, or mechanical failure is frequently a serious emergency, with potentially fatal consequences. However, unless you're doing something seriously stupid, a competent pilot is very likely to survive a rather large subset of such failures — basically anything excluding "wings fall off". Landing with engine out is expected; it only gets really interesting if there isn't a runway or suitable road within glide range. Handling the airplane with mechanical or electrical malfunctions is something flight instructors routinely test on (you can simulate a rather large range of electrical failures by pulling fuses, for example).
There are plenty of reasons there aren't flying cars; safety in response to malfunctions is certainly on the list. But that does not even remotely mean that an engine failure has to be a fatal problem.
Ten or Twenty Years? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Flying Car (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Flying Car (Score:4, Interesting)
Similar arguments were thrown at the automobile. "Oh, it'll be viable when we have roads that don't bounce the carriage enough to daze the passengers," and "it'll be viable when it's not a danger to every horse and cow in the field", and "they go too fast -- 20 mph is too dangerous".
What happened is that we became less averse to the risks of the automobile, and more willing to build our infrastructure around it because of the benefit it offered.
Right now, our society is extremely risk-adverse and lawsuit-happy. We already have a transportation infrastructure, and a flying car both does not fit it nor would it give us much more than what we have.
There are only two chances for the flying car to become popular. It could be a bit hit in a country with no transportation infrastructure, like some African countries, where they can't move cars around but would be able to find discreet landing spots here and there. Or it could be useful after our infrastructure is destroyed in a war. Note that in both scenarios, people will be more willing to take risks...
I disagree. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Flying Car (Score:3, Interesting)
We need to get people that aren't capable of safe driving off the road(SCREW grandpa's sense of entitlement!!!).
Re:Obviously it has... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Of course it slowed -- we have been too busy (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Flying Car (Score:2, Interesting)
A used Cessna 152 can be had for under $30k; a 172 or similar is probably less than $60k. Or, you can build your own airplane--you spend a couple years doing it, but the hardware cost is less, you save a lot on maintenance since you don't need a licensed mechanic to do your annual inspections (or anything past changing the oil, really), and you probably get better performance for your money. Assuming, of course, you're willing to fly in something you built in your garage.
Lots of people think flying is just for rich people. It's not. Take a look sometime at how much money people spend on other hobbies, like cars, fishing, electronics, etc. A used light airplane or homebuilt kit will cost about as much as a nice car, or a new full-size pickup and a boat. It might take a few sacrifices to own an airplane (driving an older car for a few years instead of getting a new one, forgoing a vacation or two, cooking and drinking at home instead of going out, keeping your old TV instead of getting a new one, etc), but that's true of any hobby. You just need to be honest with yourself about your priorities. There are even programs where you can buy a new airplane and lease it out to a flight school for a set time to cover some/all of the cost.
Re:Progress! Sure,but leave our business models al (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Flying Car (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently bought a book called "The 5000 Year Leap" which made this same logical error.
The authors started the book with the premise that the first colonists to land in the Americas had the same technological level as the Greeks had 4500 years previously, i.e. animal-drawn carts with wheels and swords I guess. The book is about how the US' particular philosophy drove pretty much all technological improvement ever, with a heavy dose of "BTW God is awesome."
Needless to say, I'm not much of a fan of the book. I never bothered to finish it.
But even the first chapter, I was like, "whoa, hold up there, if the Greeks had the same technology as Columbus, then why didn't the Greeks land in the Americas and colonize it?" The answer is, of course: because the author of the book was an idiot. The Spanish ships that allows Columbus to make his journey in relative were dozens of times better than the oar-driven ships the Greeks had access to. Not to mention the steel armor/weapons and gunpowder that made conquest of the natives possible-- the technology difference between the Greeks and 15th century Spain is actually really significant, when you think about it.
Now the book is true that there was a huge leap in technological development in the last couple of centuries since the US was founded, but I don't think the US's philosophical underpinnings has much to do with it. If anything, I'd credit the French Revolution's dedication to tossing every old idea and predujice into the trash and start form scratch.
Anyway, sorry to ramble, just agreeing.
Re:basic research and physical sciences (Score:3, Interesting)
"Flight" was invented by two bicycle repairmen in their spare time. The flight projects the government funded were all huge failures. Just FYI.
Historical Binders. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Flying Car (Score:2, Interesting)
Hyrdogen is a great buzz word, but in practice it is hugely inefficient.
Re:Flying Car (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Flying Car (Score:4, Interesting)
There's no need to get paranoid about our current woes. The problems are twisted enough even if everyone has good motives.
The primary component is the devaluation of human labor due to computers and robotics. Go back to 1950 and the women stayed home. A simple job gave enough income for a man to support the house in the suburbs and family. No longer is that a reality. The women work as well as the men but their real earnings are usually too low to do much more than allow them to get back to work the next day.
As more and more jobs are eliminated the conflicts will worsen until society smartens up and adopts recommended solutions form the sociologists. But sticking with current beliefs and models will only assure that pain and suffering increase and that those afflicted become the overwhelming majority of our citizens.
Try this as a concept: Allow computers and robots to exist as a legal owner of a business with the restriction that all earnings are plowed back into acquiring more and better robotic and computer abilities for the firm. Watch as all of the money in the economy becomes absorbed and locked down by the company.
Re:Lately (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Flying Car (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that the biggest issue Concorde faced was that it wasn't allowed to go super sonic anywhere near land.
Keep in mind that London to New York could be done in about 3½ hours (fastest is 2:52:59 from tarmac to tarmac) for a 5,585 km flight. New York to Los Angeles is 3,961 km so you'd expect something like 2:45 for that trip. Los Angeles to Tokyo is 8,830 km so you'd expect a 6 hour flight there. Since the plane is faster than the time zones, you could leave LAX at 10 AM for a 9 AM meeting in Tokyo. Currently the flight alone is 11 hours, and with time zones etc. you're probably looking at something like an 18 hour flight (i.e. leaving at 3 pm the day before). And do you really want to go into an all day meeting right after having spent the last 11 hours in an air plane? Six hours is more manageable. That's a small nap, a movie, and a quick shower and change of clothes.
And the Concorde was almost as efficient [wikipedia.org] as a Gulfstream G550 business jet [wikipedia.org] which is almost 30 years older.
At this time the Concorde design is more than 40 years old. The main complaint about it was noise, even though aircraft like the Boeing VC-137 [wikipedia.org] were louder. One would think that 40 years of additional engine and aircraft design would allow you to reduce not only take-off and landing noise, but also that of the sonic booms, allowing for super sonic flights over land as well. And there have recent experiments and designs [wikipedia.org] targeted at reducing the sonic boom. As it turns out those experiments points to how to make the Concorde a viable super sonic transport over land areas as well.
So, no - that's not political pissing contests driving development, but political pressure (justified or not) holding development back.
Let's dream up some numbers - imagine you were able to create a viable Concorde v.2010. It's more fuel efficient than the original, so let's up the 17 passenger miles/gallon to 22. That's a 30% improvement through better materials (lighter plane), better aerodynamic design and better engine. This is about 4.1 times worse than a Boeing 747-400 [wikipedia.org].
At the moment a one way ticket (JFK - LAX) booked 14 days in advance is about 300 dollars for a morning flight. The flight is about 6 hours, but only about 3½ hours when you factor in the time difference (but about 9 hours going the other way). I don't fly in the US, so I just used United [united.com] as my reference.
Enter the above mentioned Concorde v.2010. 3 hour flight time (on the plane), so if you have to be at LAX by 9 AM, you can leave JFK at 9 AM as well. This is currently only doable if you book a hotel at the other end or take a 5 AM flight from New York. To be in New York at 9 AM, you'd have to catch a red-eye or book a hotel the night before. This doesn't change with Concorde v.201, unless you want to leave on a 3 AM flight out of LAX with a Concorde (3 hour flight time, 3 hour time difference).
The afternoon flights are just as good. At the moment JFK - LAX would have you landing in LAX in the middle of the night, and LAX - JFK are even worse. For the Concorde v.2010 you'd be looking at a 6 pm flight out and arriving at JFK around midnight, or landing in LAX at slightly earlier than you left JFK.
So now, not only do you get to your destination about 2½ times faster, you also save the cost of hotels, AND you get to have all day meetings on different sides of the continent without it ruining the previous and following day.
From a business perspective it'd easily be worth a 10 fold ticket price. Compare 3,000 dollars as a singl
Re:Flying Car (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah yes, the "Big Sky, Small Airplane" theory.
Many pilots subscribe to this theory, and if you do out the numbers, it makes sense.
In my personal flying, I have seen enough contradictions to this theory, that I do not believe it, nor should you.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Interesting)
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".
Re:Flying Car (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's say, motorized personal transport. I'd be down with making it just as hard to get and then keep a driver's license as a pilot's license, which would have this effect. Other side effects would include depopulating those soul-killing suburbs and exurbs, bumping up civic life, making it possible for us to go carbon-negative instead of just carbon-neutral, and last, but not least, listening to all the whiny libertarepublicans moan helplessly.