Are The Benefits Of Technology Waning? 278
FallLine writes: "U.S.News and World Report has an interesting and well writen article called the The Slowing Pace of Innovation. It argues that innovation between, approximately, 1900 and 1950 had a far greater impact on the average person (and society as a whole) than innovation between 1950 and 2000. It comments particularly on innovations of the past 20 or 30 years (i.e., cell phones, PCs, the internet, etc.) and compares them with earlier inventions that most of us take for granted (i.e., the lightbulb, sanitation, plumbing, etc). This article is long overdue, in my opinion, as it puts the innovations of today into proper historical context, even when we look back just 100 years."
scientology? (Score:1)
first pizost!!! (Score:1)
Re:Well, of course this gets modded up (Score:1)
Invention vs. Innovation (Score:1)
This article seems to forget that perhaps the most important innovations of recent times have been SOCIAL innovations.
Some good: FDR's GI bill of rights, which provided an entire generation of Americans with higher education, the Generally Accepted Tarriffs and Treaties (GATT, now WTO), which dramatically lowered global trade barriers in part to dissuade another world war
Some bad: Nazism, Maoism, Stalinism.
The age of innovation on the social level is just beginning.
Re:What we're doing is using it differently (Score:1)
True, current fighters can't cruise supersonically. That's not because it's technologically impossible, but because their mission profile doesn't require it. There have been military planes capable of supersonic cruise, though. In addition to the SR-71, there was the YF-12A [att.net] interceptor version with similar performance, intended to replace the F-106 for interception of Soviet bombers. It never went into active service, though.
The other significant supersonic-cruise military plane was the General Dynamics B-58 Hustler [tripod.com]. In service from 1958 until 1969, it was designed for supersonic cruise. How does a New York - LA round trip in 4 hours, 41 minutes sound?
The SR-71. I am not aware of a replacement of the SR-71 especially since it was brough back into service for the Gulf war. Why didn't they use a more capable replacement if they had any?
Because funding of military projects is based solely on political perception of needs...there won't be a replacement until the politicians believe (correctly or not) that we need a replacement.
Re:What we're doing is using it differently (Score:1)
You're right about the SR-71 being in a league of its own -- at cruise, with the compressor bypassed, the afterburner effectively becomes the combustion chamber of a ramjet. Gotta love elegant engineering, eh? ;)
Free will is the biggest factor, IMHO (Score:1)
Whose priorities? The VCs gave money to every assinine idea so they could get rich, not so they could advance society. To the VCs, it is 'clear thinking' to bank on 1 of 10 ventures paying off. Maybe you disagree, and thus the large impasse is created.
IMHO - The biggest impediment to human progress is our free will. Things that are important to 'socially minded' folks are not important to others. Once our basic needs are met, the importance and allocation of resources becomes complicated. Such complications are fodder for wars, famine, and any other Bad Things (tm) that have occurred since humans became 'civilized'.
OTH - I do not want to give up my free will so we can become like the 'humans' in THX 1138 [geocities.com] .
Later.
"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life."
Waning? Are you joking? (Score:1)
Granted, the mapping of the human genome or landing a probe on Mars probably doesn't bring us the same awe that radio, moving pictures and the telephone brought to generations before our time, but they are none-the-less fantastic and amazing and certainly beneficial. We're a species with the ability to ultimately craft our entire future in almost every aspect. Barring our propensity to blow ourselves up and poison our world into oblivion, the benefits of our discoveries and creations are limitless and the benefits are, to this point, at their zenith.
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seumas.com
Re:No. (Score:1)
Workplace conditions are about as important as living conditions.
Life Without IC's (Score:1)
The point is, we've had more time to weave electricty into every part of our society, to the point where we have become totally dependent on electricity. In another 50 years, people will have become so dependent on "smart" devices (i.e., embedded computers), that they won't know how to function without them. How many people do you know now who know how to operate a manual SLR camera (i.e., with an external hand held light meter)? How many garages can fix automobiles with mechanical points and spark coils?
I think you would be VERY surprised how difficult this would be!! For starters, forget driving a car (electronic ignition), or having the bus arrive on time, or watching TV (solid state), or even listening to the RADIO (unless you still have an old vaccum tube model left around from the days of your youth). Don't even think about using the phone (all the switches are computerized), and you'd better hope it was a warm day, because you wouldn't be able to get any electricty or natural gas.It's all a matter of perspective...
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Re:The age of innovation is over. (Score:1)
We're only improving old tech, not inventing new.. (Score:1)
The television is a simple (in hindsight) extrapolation of radio which is an extrapolation of telegraph. The computer, the jet plane, the Space Shuttle and just about every other example of our vaunted technology can trace it's lineage the same way - step-wise progress on what has come before.
The only thing that will bring about a new, household technological revolution is NEW TECHNOLOGY. Not improvements of old, existing stuff, but technology based on something entirely new. I'm not saying that we should throw out what we already have, I'm just saying that, until we get a new platform to build upon all we'll get is an improved model of what we already have.
For my money, I'm betting on Nanotechnology - not microtech but true nanotech - to be that platform. When you consider the possible uses of that technology, you start to realize the profound changes it could make in our daily lives. For instance - actual, final cures for cancer, aids, aging - even the common cold. Want a new house? Go buy the basic nanotech bundle to build it. And it won't be necessary to cut down a forest to put up the frame, either. Nanotech has the potential to assemble your new house out of pretty much anything that's lying around - trash, rock, dirt, etc. - by reassembling the molecules from something useless into something useful.
Yes, I read SF. No, I don't expect this level of maturity in that technology any time soon. But...I do expect to see the beginnings of it in my lifetime. And, I expect it to bring about a societal change even more profound than the internal combustion engine, the telegraph and the airplane. The question will be whether I can keep up with it or whether I'll be resigned to the trash heap of time with Ozzie and Harriet.
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Be alert!!! America needs more lerts!
Re:scientology? (Score:2)
Re:Another Utterly Idiotic Article (Score:2)
Many people living today grew up when a 50-100 mile car trip was something you packed lunch for and spent a day on, not an hour's jaunt costing only a few dollars in fuel. Some of this is due to the fact that we have much better cars these days; a lot of it is that the automobile became pervasive and heavily affected the way society functions.
Telegraphs and telephones are nice, but the form they were in in the 1950s is completely unlike the way modern communications allowed me to leave on a week's notice to spend a month literally on the other side of the planet and not just be in touch with everyone (friends, family, coworkers, random forum participants) so seamlessly that they never had to realize that I wasn't at home. Within 3 hours of getting off the plane, I was sitting in Taipei listening to a radio station at home, answering email and chatting with my roommates, just as we normally did when I was working late and, thanks to IBM.net's generous roaming policy, this cost me a grand total of $0.00.
Similarly - a random individual from the 1950s would be familar with the word "nuclear" but I think perspective has dulled that authors view of how strange that was to all but a few physicists. There's a difference between making a [primitive] bomb and the sort of applications which have become available - nuclear medicine anyone?
And then you get to medicine. Again, while there may be some similar terms, the effect is completely different. Consider the commonplace things - restoring vision, cosmetic/reconstructive surgery, reattaching limbs or organ transplants - all of which are completely unremarkable. There's a major shift in society between the time something becomes possible and heralded as an amazing event and the time much better versions are available everywhere and at a fraction of the cost.
(Note that I'm excluding genetic engineering from that list, as I don't consider it to have reached anywhere near full potential yet. 10 years from now, one the other hand. . .)
Lastly, consider the shift in computers. Yes, the word existed but it's only been in the last decade that they've become pervasive. It's not a case of being used in a few high-end fields like engineering; increasingly it's a fact of life for anything beyond menial labor. There's also a considerable difference between a large company using an early mainframe to store billing records and my being able to carry around many orders of magnitude more power and capacity in my shirt pocket, where it's used to store notes and pull things off of the web. Initially, computers just replaced manual filing systems - there was no equivalent of what can be done today - searching a global network, controlling just about any device, video/audio editing even at the level of even 405 the movie [405themovie.com] ($10K to do what simply wasn't possible 20 years ago?), all of the different data visualization / manipulation aids, etc. The word "computer" is involved but it doesn't mean what it did then.
Much room for innovation left (Score:2)
As the article said, the light bulb lengthened the day for many people.
Right now I spend 1.5+ hours on the road a day coming and going to work. Why can't someone innovate a way to cut out that time and make my life better - teleport me, beam me up. Or at least let a central system drive all the cars so you don't have idiots cutting in and out slowing traffic.
Sure, it may seem like far-fetched stuff. But at one point, so was sending power through a small wire for light, sending your voice down the phone, and flying.
And given the troubles with landfills filling up, I don't think we've mastered sanitation yet!
Re:Much room for innovation left (Score:2)
Somewhat - it's great if you live in the heart of a metro area. However, where I live there is no public transportation, so I really have no choice. And the only person I could carpool with works a different schedule than I do.
Hopefully the commuter rail they are talking about putting in will work. I can drive 5 miles instead of 27 and one of the stops will be right on the campus where I work!
Re:Television GOOD. Internet BAD. (Score:2)
Try again.
That's just perception. (Score:2)
Be careful not to fall into the rut that this poor guy did:
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
What a tool.
Hospital efficiency (Score:2)
The situation may be different in the US, but considering that the US spends about twice the proportion of its GDP on health for about the same life expectancy I doubt it.
Video telephones (Score:2)
Essentially all the components of videophones have been assembled, all that we need is to agree on some standards and wrap it up in an easy-to-use package and we'd be there.
One question that hasn't been answered is whether people actually *want* videophones. Given that the components described above have been around for at least 2 years now, and there hasn't been an explosion in their use, perhaps not.
The Pill (Score:2)
Re:For the doubters (Score:2)
Everytime, my grandfather would counter them by " yes, but they shit on the snowbank! ".
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Re:For the doubters (Score:2)
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You miss the point (Score:2)
Your entire entire argument consists of the fact that you think today's technology is cooler, more complex, or whatever. You say farm work is more productive today than it was 50 years ago? Certainly. But does this automatically mean it's more important than the lightbulm? Not if you look at it objectively. Look at the harder economic measures of productivity. If you were to look, you would indeed discover that the gains at the first 50 years of the century make the gains of the last 50 look downright childish! Similarly, the average life expectancy has not improved nearly as dramatically in the past 50 years as it did 50 years before that. Put simply, if you are a middle class American, your life is not all that different from your parents or grandparents on the aggregate, insofar as technology goes.
The fact that you and so many other slashdot readers are so myopic as to think that your precious technology is more revolutionary than what your parents or grandparents had is precisely what makes this article so worthwhile. The biggest "crock", in my opinion, is the fact that so many pundits proclaim the internet to be the single most (or one of) revolutionary innovation of the century.
If you want to say that the internet, or whatever technology, is too new to be evaluated and is GOING to have a revolutionary impact, fine, but be clear that it has not happened yet. Furthermore, be aware that you may well be wrong that it will even dramatically change most peoples' lives. History is littered with many incorrect predictions.
Re:Free will is the biggest factor, IMHO (Score:2)
I suggest to you that this process of challenging ludicrous claims is far better than the alternatives, such as:
Not challenging any myths--letting everything go.
Forcing the market to act in some way that I, or anyone else, chooses.
Providing capital to "socially minded" causes through some government agency or charity/non-profit. (I've seen how most grant money is spent, and it's downright shamefull). If people want to spend their money that way, I'm not going to stop them...but that doesn't mean it's not a mistake.
Central planning of most any sort.
Excessive restrictions...
19th century for political systems (Score:2)
came into importance in the 19th century:
the nation-state based on linguistic groups,
democratic-republics,
socialism/communism,
the limited-liability stock-holder company.
The 20th century has been elaborations of these.
The history of "futurism" (Score:2)
predicted about the future, in the media, at
world fairs and the such. Up to 1970 or so
people prediction mechanical wonders like new
vehicles, space travel, appliances, etc.
Then as new age technical pesstimism set in,
the view switched to touchy-feely stuff like
ecology, psychology, and biology. The Disney Epcot
dome ride epitimizes this view. Since the
personal computer in the 1980s the future now looks at networks, virtual environements,
supercomputing, etc.
The future is "more of the recent past".
Lessons of history (Score:2)
A couple of nits (Score:2)
2) A major cause of the spread of AIDS is the improvement of the transportation system. It has made effective quarantines essentially impossible. It was once relatively common for folk to be isolated from everone else (e.g., on a ship) for several months before reaching a new country. Several smallpox epidemics were nipped that way (well, AIDS takes longer to become symptomatic, but diagnosis is possible after only about a month or two [sorry for ignorance of details]). Of course, the same strategy didn't work so well with yellow fever or malaria, but biology isn't the same as transportation.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Typical 'life was perfect in the 50s' crap (Score:2)
Computers have fundamentally altered nearly every aspect of our working lives. Sure, most people don't have computerized homes, but what about the office? Would 'Ozzie and Harriet' have been able to figure out how to start a robotic production line? Run an MRI? Operate a call center? Analyze financial data in Excel? Do any of a thousand things we take for granted now. If not they'd have a hard time getting a job.
Digital storage has fundamentally changed the ability of businesses and consumers to disseminate information. For example, in 1950 you could buy an encyclopedia set -- typically this was very expensive. Now you get an entire set of encyclopedias on a CD-ROM costing almost nothing. The Internet has accelerated this; company and governement websites offer information that used to require phone calls, or snail mail requests.
Materials have dramatically improved since the 50s. Sure, some of these were invented by 1950, but few if any were in widespread use: Saran wrap, teflon/gore-tex, carbon fiber/composites, a multitude of alloys, polyester.
Radio phones existed in the 50s, but it's hard to compare that to the ubiquitous cell phones and pagers of today. Lasers have allowed such medical refinements as laproscopy and vision correction.
This article seems to point out the painfully obvious -- the 'low hanging fruit' of technology has already been picked. It's difficult to conceive of a fundamental improvement to the automobile that is workable -- personal aircraft? computer control? teleportation?, likewise with home appliances. Future improvements will usually be marginal, but who knows -- maybe transmutation is just around the corner.
Go One Step Further (Score:2)
Look at how long it takes to get a CAT scan back compared to just a few years ago. Also, the resolution of CAT scans. You have been able to get information off of the Internet for a while now, but machines now have an uptime of months, if not years, thanks to innovations in server uptime. Things are moving along just as fast, and affect people's lives, but it is all behind the scenes.
I also agree about the timing and format of the article. Reminds me of some of the doomsday Y2K articles that hit just before the new year last year.
Bryan R.
Re:Another Utterly Idiotic Article (Score:2)
This is so stupid (Score:2)
If we analyze the impact in terms of the quantity of innovation, hands down, no comparison, 1950-2000 wins. The great number of fields which were not only innovated but invented during that time period is dramatic. Entire fields of study were created and largely mastered during the period - jet engines, communications theory, solid-state electronics.
If we look at quality, we need to consider the sum of these innovations. One area that we must consider is that of medicine. Sure, the introduction of penicillin in the 1920's was dramatic, but more dramatic than the polio vaccine? Or the eradication of smallpox? Or the introduction of cardiac defibrillators? I'm not so sure.
And we must surely consider the technology innovations which allow the technologies developed in the first half of this century to proliferate around the world. Technology innovation isn't merely about inventing things, it's about inventing new ways to make and integrate them into our lives. The Phoenecians discovered purple dyes, but it took a German chemical engineer in the 1800's to find a way to allow us to mass manufacture it.
This article is just more of the boring, short-sighted, nay-saying stuff that US News always cranks out. It's pretty boring, because if you consider the reality - that innovation comes in many forms, none better than any other - then you realize that innovation continues at the same pace as it always has
The ability to create is a fixed part of human nature. At most, the increased world population means that innovations are increasing, not decreasing. Silly article.
Re:Well...yeah (Score:2)
X-Rays also -- back then, they saved a huge number of lives by allowing better care of all fractures. In the past few decades, more precision and CAT scan technology have allowed better treatments of teeth and less life-threatening injuries. But the overall benefits from the early X-Rays were more massive than the current gains -- even though now we sleet the body with much less radiation and get the images faster and with more detail, the basic benefit of knowing exactly where the bone is broken is not much greater than with the first X-Rays.
Necessity is the mother of invention (Score:2)
I think it is unfair to say that the pace of innovation is slowing down. It is more accurate to say that the areas where innovation is occuring are not ones which have the kind of impact upon everyday life that the light bulb did.
Then of course there is the factor of diminishing marginal returns. The invention of the light bulb was groundbreaking, refinements in its design are much less so.
Also there is the of how many people really understand the innovation which is currently happening. If the discovery of the structure of DNA can be compared to the discovery of fire, the mapping of the human genome is equivalent to the splitting of the atom. Within a few generations genetic diseases will be a thing of the past. Imagine if the average person had an IQ of 150 instead of 100. Imagine if there were no stupid people. There is no technical reason why this cannot be achieved through genetic engineering. The elimination of stupidity would do more to make the world a better place than just about any other single thing I can imagine.
But I'm getting off track here. If anything the pace of innovation and its breadth have increased, not declined.
Lee Reynolds
The Age of *Infrastructure* is Over... (Score:2)
What's changing is the technological areas (Score:2)
In the same way that steam was once the principle area of technological innovation, that iron was, it's possible that silicon has peaked. Fine. Everything has it's day. Maybe optical computing will the the next nexus of technological innovation. Or biology. Or something that we cannot imagine.
At one point just after the turn of the last century, there was a call to shut down the patent office because "everything that can be invented already has" (now we have different reasons to want to shut it down!)
That's why it's called "innovation"...because it's stuff that we don't know about yet. This article, if the writer is unlucky, may one day have the same sort of notority that Vannervar Bush had with his vision of a few huge computers, with acres of vacumn tubes, cooled by Niagras of water.
What we have now is nothing compared to what we will have soon.
Re:Much room for innovation left (Score:2)
And a side benefit of discovering teleportation technology would almost certainly mean the ability to create goods Star Trek style out of thin air (well out of bulk matter.) Recycling becomes perfectly effient, as we can transform any type of matter into any other type of matter. Cheap teleportation and related technologies would truely be revolutionary, and would probably be the single most important technology ever developed in human history.
What's scary is the idea of expensive, hard to use teleportation technology that can only be operated by governments or very large corporations. Thats what would lead to the end of privacy, and huge increases in crime and smuggeling (as organized crime would likely have the resources to operate teleportation devices for drug running, breaking and entering etc...) police would become all powerful and private citizens freedoms would be restricted even further in order to protect us all from the dangers of illegal teleportation.
these "marginal gains" really changed our lives (Score:2)
For one thing, the author throws away the importance of computers and the internet. I find this unbelievable. I am a computer scientist, as are many of
Computer science has created whole new sub-cultures. I find it amazing to look at
He marginalizes the amazing gains in medicine. I am sure the author would not feel this way if he saw these "marginal" gains save his loved one's lives, as I have. How many of us know someone who would have been dead if they had their heart attack 50 years ago? This is marginal?
He talks about a slight gain in productivity. Strange, the Greenspan's biggest reason for the rise of the stock market is increases in productivity, especially due gains in technology. I guess Allan doesn't know what he is talking about. Today I pay my bills online in seconds. I manage my budget in minutes. I can plan my week in minutes. I am many times more productive than I would have been without those technologies. The gains in computing speed made the impossible a reality with the Human Genome Project. Productivity is not measure in word processors. My mother is an accountant. Ask her how much time she saves with spreadsheets and databases over pen and paper. She once told me, "Thank God that when I have to do the books, they are not really books anymore!"
He completly ignores changes in society. While still not totally free, information is far less censered than in the 50s. We find Nick at Nite quaint, not because of it's acurate portrayal of 50s life but it's portrayal of silly 50s TV standards. Today, we can find information about many things that were hidden in the past. Sexuality is much more open today than it was 50 years ago. While it still has a way to go, the treatment of minorities is much better than 50 years ago. They are protected by laws that give the same chances a white male as in the workplace, at the bank, at school, and in the media. Women no longer are stuck at home in the "Mrs. Cleaver" role and now the Beave has friends that are Blacks, Latinos, and Asians of various orignal nationalities. These changes have huge ramifications on the world we live in.
Progess shouldn't be measured in blenders and cars. We may be unhappy that we don't have HAL, personal rocket packs, flying cars, and PanAm flights to space but there has been a lot of progress in the last 50 years.
Re:For the doubters (Score:2)
While many great things happened in the past, great things are happening today and will happen tomorrow. The best is always yet to come.
Re:Productivity is hardly increased by online bill (Score:2)
Spreadsheets have reduced the number of people required per equal unit of work. There are still a lot of accountants, money managers and such because there is more work to do. These "more elaborate models" enable people to properaly and quickly plan their finances and move on to other productive activities. I used to write stock option and bond software. Did this eliminate the need for a trader? No, but it allowed him to make better, faster decisions. This let him produce more in the same amount of time and effort.
Coms are dropping because they were not using the data produced by these models. Data that indicated that you have to make a profit to stay in business.
Re:Without Doubt, Yes. (Score:2)
Of course, I am in the dark too...monitors make great candles!
If it can't be measured in $$ i'ts worthless (Score:2)
I think we'll need the next fifty years or so to evaluate the inventions of the previous fifty years, their effect on our personal life and our society. It's like saying after the invention of the car "Ok, another way to move someone from point A to point B, so what's new? Trains do this already, and riding is only a bit slower
Another example is telecommunicartions: it was used already for telegrams, and for sure there were some changes already, at least the news was faster, but what really affected most people was the advent of the telephone, the possibility to call aunt mary just to tell her what a horrible day it was.
In the same way we can't even begin to evaluate what effect the technology developped in the last fifty years will have on our society. What will be the paramount application of the internet making it's way into history books fifty years from now? The free exchange of opinions in forums such as this? The incredible new ways of marketing products via the internet? The "global village"? The total loss of privacy?
The real effects of semiconductor technology on society just begin to become obvious, about fifty years after its invention. And only a fool can expect to see the impact of the internet on our society a few years after it's available to a significant number of people worldwide. The possibilities inherent in genetics are barely recognizable right now. Even something less newsworthy right now, like solar energy, might bring fundamental changes fifty years from now by allowing "third world countries" to become "global players".
Re:Without Doubt, Yes. (Score:2)
walk, horse, car -- transportation
"eat normal meals made in cookers and kept in fridges [...]"
prepared food - fridge is this generation of advancement, the next is genetically engineered food
"work doing much the same sort of jobs (although on a macroscopic scale there may be some new industries) [...]",
true, but it ignores the shift to service jobs where education is needed. In the 40's and 50's you could get a job with little skill out of high school and be almost guaranteed employment. In the future people will almost certainly need some kind of post secondary education to fill any job that isn't simple assembly line or simple service.
"go and watch films, sporting events, etc etc"
Well yeah. Sports have existed for thousands of years, various dice, card whatever games etc. If you categorize all entertainment as the same thing and say it won't change for sure. Are interactive video games different from other types of entertainment? I'd say yes. Yeah, we've pretty much explored all different types of passive and interactive entertainment, but I doubt they will stay in a static state. But based on your argument something like dice and tekken tag tournament arent much different. Entertainment is entertainment. It doesn't matter if it's more life like or engrossing or is better at telling stories.
"What will a history book in 100 years say about the 1990's"
What do history books say about countless decades in the past millenia? Evolution can be punctuated. Science is punctuated (i.e., one discovery can trigger a string of discoveries that results in it being called a period of enlightenment etc). One thing's for sure though - scientific discoveries in the past century grew exponentially because we have a lot of scientists in academia and corporations who are there because they have resources because of capitalism which is because of the industrial revolution. Is 1990 - 2000 really that bad? It only brought biotechnology and bio engineering companies, Microsoft, a refined personal computer, internet to the masses, tons of new consumer electronics, the end of communism, the birth of the wto, probably tons of medical advances I can't think of at this moment etc.
"but nothing as radical as the telephone - diminishing returns again"
I think you're mistaken. The telephone allowed for the large chain and then the multinational company - but email has really changed corporations. No more stupid memos whatever and you can reply at your leisure and both communicators dont have to be communicating to each other at the same time. Even if it was a diminishing return, it's not like it is insignificant.
Um, people becoming culturally and socially homogenous does not equal the end of history. I do not know how one logically follows from the other. Furthermore you could make a similar argument that within the british and roman empires it was the end of history because people were becoming socially and culturally homogenous - like it is a bad thing. Becoming socially and culturally homogenous does not mean the end of intelligent though and it does not mean the end of history.
"not just in the physical sense, but also the conflict of ideas and ideaologies"
I disagree. In the united states specifically people are divided politically. Its culture also breeds a type of individualism that causes one to question idealogy and authority. Compare it to (not sure if this is changing) japan for example where the social payoff comes from avoiding 'no' answers and shoving things under the rug and just shrugging off government corruption. The 80's and 90's by the way brought a shift in employment where people have much more mobility - which of course also brings insecurity and easy termination. It arguably created a population with more anxiety than the two previous generations.
"Scots were very different to what they are now"
Yeah, but compare canadians 100 years ago to scotts. I'd guess not that much difference. I dont know scottish history but Im guessing they were just getting into the industrial revolution like everyone else. If not, maybe they stayed in pre-industiral revolution a little longer than their english counter-parts or whatever. But so what? I still dont see how people becoming more homogenous, specialized, etc as equated as "the end of history". I think the opposite is the truth: higher quality of life, more mobility - as in you get to choose what you do given an education, etc
"Scotland is rapidly, in the cultural sense, becoming a place just like any other."
So is everywhere else. First the english took over half the world, then america became a world superpower. The language of business is english. If they are being replaced it is because said cultures are inferior - at least in a business sense. Instead of war and the spread of religion we have business and mass media and entertainment. As an aside, I also dont buy the argument that it dumbs down the population. Access to material that will result in intellectual enlightenment is more readily available than it was in the past. There are some compelling anti-consumerism / anti-advertising propaganda arguments, but either way I don't think there is any doubt that this is superior to previous methods.
In conclusion, "the end of history", in my opinion, is doublespeak which means you do not like the *change* that is happening which results in homogenous culture. Globalization is a force of change which has many negative and positive side effects. The next decades will see us ironing them out. Potholes in the road are IMO, definite.
Re:Without Doubt, Yes. (Score:2)
Anyone who thinks something similar about any technology obviously is so disconnected from said fields that they have no idea what they are talking about. Take cognitive science for example. 20,000 neuroscientists are busy today unlocking the secrets of the brain. In 20 years the domain specific knowledge in cognitive science today will seem pathetic. Coupled with other advances we will have exponential growth in knowledge and capability.
500mhz is utterly pathetic for many of the problems we wish to solve.
Re:Without Doubt, Yes. (Score:2)
Yeah, tell that to all the people in third world countries.
Secondly, just because the average person has inched up on maslows hierarchy doesn't mean "the end of science" or the "end of technology". Civilizations fall and time doesn't stand still. New problems, and reincarnations of old problems will come to be.
"But how will it affect me? Not at all, I'll wager"
Um, the cure to cancers, aids, technologies to lengthen life? Hey, they might not affect you because you'll be either dead before said technology comes to exist, or the opposite, already born so you would not be eligible for DNA re-engineering. Future generations however, will not witness the end of science or the end of technology.
Re:Hindsight is 20/20 (Score:2)
And I don't disagree that today, we are capable of supporting our own invensions, but I dont think we're too far off from the scale of complexity I was trying to describe (50-100 or so years off).
If something has never been said/seen/heard before, best stop to think about why that is.
Hindsight is 20/20 (Score:2)
But just to take a historical approach, all innovation has come in 'spurts'. Use of tools, and then the transition from using various sorts of metals for those tools were all intersperced with fairly significant gaps of time betwixt those innovations.
ICs, while developed 'after' the 50 years in questions, depended on scientific innovations made before 1950. See: History of the Transistor [att.com]. Lasers were conceptualized before that. As for the gent who asked 'where would we be without the IC or the laser', I can answer only with: still in cars, still with telephones, still with television. NOT with the internet, NOT with an extra 10 or so years of life expentancy (under which the assumption that medical advances do indeed represent benificial innovation is arguable, as a beating heart seems to be more important that healthy and happy emotions in today's value system), and not with video games, chat boards, an online world community (which really only includes those with access to computers). While the technology world has improved, tweaked, and unarguably changed our social existance over the past 50 years, our quality of life, and almost anything you do that doesn't involve a computer relys on scientific principals that were theorized long before 1950 rolled around. Note that it took Einstein, centuries later, to come up with something better than Newtonian psysics.
Also note the 60s/70s views that we'd all be living on the moon by now. Clearly, optimism was high regarding the continuation of technological innovation, but what people forgot to take into account was that the research currently on the bleeding edge is so complex to maintain and manage that we may in fact come to a point where we are simply incapable of comprehending the scope of a given application or technology, and whereby a group of people large enough to work on it will die before they are able to complete their work; ie, innovations that are so complex that we simply are unable to attain them.
If something has never been said/seen/heard before, best stop to think about why that is.
slavery (Score:2)
Yes, but far more important than mere nutrition or sanitation, our modern computers will enable our capitalist ruling class to finally achieve their centuries-old dream of enslaving and monitoring everyone on the globe!
OK, so the Panopticon prison [rochester.edu] is really an old idea, dating from the end of the eighteenth century. For that matter, Lucian, in ancient Rome, invented, but could not implement, the manned Lunar expedition... But Bentham's panopticon originally was applied against the inmates of a single penetentiary, not the population of the whole planet; and with the limited technology of his time even that was practically impossible to implement. No longer! The millenium is in sight!
One might argue (if one were unafraid to be labeled as a Kommie subversive) that such a scheme is deeply immoral. Arguments such as that, however, have never restrained any ruling class ever. Besides, we know that the one and only moral imperative [mises.org] that counts in this world today is that one which demands, "greater, and greater, and ever greater returns for stockholders".
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:To see the impact, we have to wait awhile (Score:2)
As it said, cars were around in 1900, but only available to the very rich. Things like electricity had to be physically brought to people's homes, as did running water, which takes time and a lot of money. Not much point having an indoor toilet if to flush it you had to bring in a bucket of water from the river.
We have our basic needs fufilled pretty well now. Food, clothing, shelter, medical care. These are not our primary focus anymore. I think gene mapping is remarkable, but we won't know the real benefits of it for decades. Same for the net, or computer technology in general. In the developed nations, we are focusing on being more efficient, not on reinventing the icebox. Aside from the advances in sanitation and refrigeration, we have been intent on giving ourselves more free time.
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Well...yeah (Score:2)
Things that have changed have been refinements of those, mostly for the sake of entertainment. No matter how glorious the Internet becomes, it won't impact my life as much as not having to to bring in water from a river.
One finds parallels in medicine as well. Things have slowed down since the discovery basic sanitation, anesthesia and understanding of human anatomy. While medical knowledge continues to expand, it won't have the broad, far-reaching implications for everyone that thoroughly cleaning surgical equipment did.
Haven't we learned yet? (Score:2)
What happened when main frames came about? People said that they should close the patent office, becuase there was nothing left to invent!
WHat happened after Newton died in the Physics world, almost nothing for 400 years.
What happened in the late 1600s when the black plauge began spreading? People were sure the world was ending.
The point is, The human race as a whole seems to have this painfully fatalistic attitude, which does nothing but impeade progress. In this century alone, the major advancements, (Quantum Physics, The information age, etc.) all occured when people DOUBTED what their "elders" taught them.
It seems society as a whole has this bullshit idea that older people are just plain superior to younger people. Not to say that they aren't wiser, but if they are it is NOT because they are older. When we look at what is "taken forgranted," we find that there are often faults with it.
The idea of science is that it is OK to disagree. In fact, it is your duty as a scientist. You should DOUBT everything, until you have seen data that suggests otherwise.
--Alex the GNome Fishman
The age of innovation is over. (Score:2)
Running water, sanitation and medical aid have tangible benefits, like longer life span, increased health and reduced BO.
Most of the major "We need this to survive" itches have been scratched already. Until we develop telepathy or Star Trek style travel technology, there will not be any major, life altering changes, just incremental upgrades to what we already have.
What do computers give you? Frustration every time it crashes (Unless you're running BSD or BE, then you're frustrated by file format incompatibilities with the other OSes, but I digress) Most users don't care about computers beyond word processing. More advanced users care about spreadsheets e-mail and web surfing. In the end, only Ubergeeks like my fellow SlashDot readers care about computers beyond the basics.
Most of the technology that's been developed in the last 50 years involved the creation, manipulation and transfer of information, that's just not as vital as being able to see well after the sun goes down.
There's also the infrastructure issue. With a few government subsidies, even rural areas could get connected to the phone system by building a few buildings and digging some trenches, but running clean line for DSL and installing the hardware at the various offices disturbs existing infrastructure. Someone's phone access might be disrupted, and the technology just doesn't offer the massive benefits that the early land lines did.
Adding a GPS system, cellular emergency call button and map database to cars will do more for the mass consumers (Once the technology is wide spread and inexpensive) than the latest and greatest VooDoo chip or Load Balancing innovations in MS-Windows 20xx.
We'll never have the flying cars that have been promised since the 1930's because the infrastructure to support them would disrupt commercial airlines. Until we run out of oil, we'll never have Ethanol, Natural Gas or other alternative-fuel cars in nationwide use, because the infrastructure to support them (Refuelling stations, repair centers, dealerships) is too expensive to justify the trouble and cost for most consumers, and even then, they'll just be a tweak to existing technology.
www.matthewmiller.net [matthewmiller.net]
Re:No. (Score:2)
Hundreds of millions of people have been saved by technology. Look in any hospital: would it be there without computers? Probably. Would it be even 5% as efficient? Absolutely not.
While I agree computers have made hospitals more efficient, I think that 5% is way off. I don't think hospitals are taking care of 20 times as many patients or processing them 20 times as quickly as they used to. Actually, while office automation has improved efficiency in the workplace, I don't think it's by quite as much as a lot of people seem to think. People are working longer hours than they used to, and the efforts of millions of IT workers are needed to develop and maintain this automation. I'd think the typewriter and telephones were more important innovations in term of the workplace when they came out.
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No. (Score:2)
Hundreds of millions of people have been saved by technology. Look in any hospital: would it be there without computers? Probably. Would it be even 5% as efficient? Absolutely not.
Let's look at the computers which analyze patient data. They do it in three dimensions, point out warning signs, etc. All of this is stuff that humans cannot do! Computers can investigate images at much higher resolution and spit out every single warning for doctors to look into further.
Some people may say refrigeration was more important than computers. It was a prerequisite, but not as important. It saved the lived of about a million people (rough estimate) and before true electronic refrigeration, we've had iceboxen for the past 40,000 years. Refrigeration might've helped keep meat fresher, but computers save hundreds of lives every day and also are *fun* to play on. Refrigerators are not fun to play on, no matter how hard you try (don't, please
Any magazine who runs an article like this is obviously just going for the shock factor. "Hey, news is slow today! Let's run some fuzzy article on why technology sucks!"
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Re:Without Doubt, Yes. (Score:2)
This post, like the article itself, seemed to me to have a curious myopia: The assumption that things we see now are all there is, that desires, motivations, and valuations somehow are static.
Re:Without Doubt, Yes. (Score:2)
Sarcasm aside, I think that the original poster, and the current one, are missing a crucial fact: "Incremental" changes can precipitate revolutionary shifts. For example, as an educated, middle-class American, I have the reasonable expectation that I will never face starvation. So in one sense, no technology ever could "more solve" this problem.
Why do I have that expectation, though? In part because the advance of technology has created a demand for scientifically trained people and I happen to be a science teacher. Advances in productivity have given us enough leisure to make my job feasible. And beyond that, the IC and the computer have revolutionized my job, making it more meaningful and fulfilling for me and my students (I hope), who now have access to modes of knowing and thinking not available before.
If all you care about is the ability to satisfy the fundamentals (food, shelter, etc.) and you won't accept that making these more widespread counts as "major", then yes, I suppose you'll have to conclude that modern tech won't satisfy those needs any more than previous tech. Of course, the "previous tech" is not steam engine and fertilizer. It's wheel and agriculture... there's been no "progress" for 20,000 years.
What about 8000 years ago? (Score:2)
I'm sorry, you're wrong.
The single greatest invention in the history of mankind was agriculture.
Without that, we'd all still be spending our lives grubbing for today's food, playing hunter/gatherer and being not much more than really bright chimps.
Agriculture changed everything about being human. It made the development of civilization possible, by allowing people to live in larger groups. It enabled everything which has come since.
Not that it has necessarily been a good experience for everyone involved...
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Re:What we're doing is using it differently (Score:2)
Ah, but I have to differ with you. Not to take anything away from those grand engineering projects, but:
Concorde has been surpassed by a number of aircraft (although admittedly none of which are passenger aircraft).
SR-71 is a grand old piece of equipment; I've been in the Dryden hanger with two of them, and it was an unforgettable experience. However, do you really think they'd have been retired without a more-capable replacement? ;)
Apollo 11; while a very functional design, the Apollo spacecraft is far from "matchless". We haven't gone back to the Moon (which deeply saddens me), but present-day manned spacecraft (X-38, for one) are being designed with much greater understanding than Apollo -- even if they don't have the same mission.
Hydrogen Bomb -- those were re-engineered continually, with better tools as time went on. The last ones designed were far more sophisticated and capable than the first ones -- and now we can simulate the bomb pretty effectively in a computer, without even building it.
Your statement is misleading, I think; the Eiffel Tower is grand, as is the Statue of Liberty. They haven't been duplicated since, but does that mean their engineering is unsurpassed? Hardly... Back then, we just lived with less-optimized hardware.
Your computer couldn't be even designed and built with that level of computer support, you know.
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Re:What we're doing is using it differently (Score:2)
So do the designers and builders of the Egyptian pyramids, for an equivalently-majestic example.
Your point would be?
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Re:Well, not really (Score:2)
I think if you're going to start arguing about basic needs, at the extremes you can say once we had women to fuck and meat to eat, our needs ended there something thousand years ago (male perspective obviously). Everything since then has just been a refinement of those two goals.
Plus innovation might have unseen consequences, like the printing press, which started with bringing the bible to the masses, it eventually also brought them cheap education and information. It has permanently changed the way governments act. At the time, it probably just seemed like a refinement of hand lettering, much like the internet seems just like a refinement of commercials, newspapers, and people on streetside soap boxes. With any luck, it'll become something greater than that.
Re:Well...yeah (Score:2)
But even given this I think you, and the article are correct.
The answer to this, I think, is that their are certain natural limitation to the human body/experience. We can fight off disease but we still age. A unheated house is very uncomfortable but their is little differnce in experience if we keep the temprature at 72 or exactly 70 degrees. There is a limit to the extent of our natural senses.
We, of course, don't have to obey this limitation and did not most of the world feel morally (or enviously) restrained to keep ourselves basically natural we would not face this problem. For instance for thousands of years man has known various chemicals can directly influence our perceptions...and emotions. Of course such chemicals have negative effects (tolerance and physical dependence) but nothing we know says this is a necessery effect of chemical use (yes tolerance is a natural effect but why not more research into possibly getting around this).
Alternatively we have possesed the ability to do genetic changes in humans for years now but we refuse to take it (in my opinion because of an unvoiced fear that we will be obsolete in the face of our descendents).
Re:It's called "Perspective" (Score:2)
When the needs are great, small technological improvements generate great benefit. Like, switching from nomadic hunter-gatherer to agriculture and animal husbandry is a small technological change, but a huge change in standard of living, and a huge decrease in risk.
Then, switching from a preindustrial to a postindustrial society was a huge technological leap, but not as incredibly noticeable in society: civilized before, civilized after.
Then, industrialization not only wiped out the need for 95% of our population of farmers, it eventually wiped out the need for 95% of our population of factory workers, creating the service economy of today where most people are working on jobs that were inconceivable to hunter-gatherer (you answer phone calls to support people who answer phone calls from people who need insurance to protect their vacation homes?)
so, the benefits of innovation today only seem to be small, while the innovations themselves (reading the whole fucking human genome, for christ's sake) are far bigger than they've ever been.
Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
This is just silly. I don't think anyone would argue that the pace of innovation has increased the last 50 years. But how do you compare relative importance? Answer: you can't, and this is why.
Which is more important: the invention of fire or iron tools? Clearly the answer is fire, not only because it is clearly more important, but that you can't have iron tools without fire. This is a simple example, but take any innovation today and you can trace back to an innovation before it. This means (by definition) the innovation before it is more important because you need it to bootstrap the later innovation.
Therefore, by definition, all earlier innovations are more important than later innovations, and thus comparing eras is meaningless.
Now, that doesn't mean you can't compare individual innovations, just not eras.
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Re:What about 150 years ago? (Score:2)
The greatest, single most important invention in all the history of mankind was the invention of railroads, some 150 years ago.
I have to disagree with you on that. While the railroads are unquestionably a watershed event in human history, I have to say that the invention of the printing press has to take the award for "most important".
Nothing really significant was invented after 1950...
Velcro. :) Think about it -- what was velcro a refinement of? There were absolutely no temporary fasteners like it, short of tying two strings together.
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Re:This argument is real short-sighted. (Score:2)
One cannot deny that the rate of change is increasing, or that this increase will produce faster or "acellerated" innovation.
What this article fails to realize is that any technologies impact on society is subjective, and will change over time. While computers, or the internet are not as significant as running water, indoor plumbing, or penicillen, digital technology most certainly is.
Furthermore, we have no way of accurately predicting the impact of any given technology, untill it has been properly observed... Remember, Ebay/Amazon/Slashdot are NOT the Internet, they are simply uses of the (currently) most popular protocol.
um.. I done, you can stop reading...
Dentistry? (Score:2)
My father told horror stories of the foot-pedal powered drill his dentist used. And he had horrible, horrible teeth, all of his molars were either filled or capped, and he was religious about brushing. My mother's not much better. I've had one cavity in my life, and I have friends who have had none.
the same thing can be said for 1850 - 1900 (Score:2)
Re:No. -- Yes (Score:2)
Re:Well...yeah (Score:2)
PC innovation virtually ground to a halt because of the PC clones. The Mac, the Amiga, even the Atari ST were innovative; the Compaq was not. I had a Tandy 2000 which ran rings around the XTs which were its contemporaries, but it wasn't "compatible" so it fell by the wayside. Hey, if it weren't for PC cloning, the Shack might have come out with a 68020 based Color Computer running OS/9 68K and cheap home *nix boxes would have swept the nation 12 years ago.
Television GOOD. Internet BAD. (Score:2)
Looks like between 1930 and 1949 we were going hog-wild on executions. Average nearly 150 a year. Lots of people whacking each other. Nothing better to do.
But then TV came along. By 1968 people found watching Star Trek and Green Acres and Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom much more amusing than whacking each other. No executions for capital crimes between 1968 and 1976.
Then Disco came in 1977 but only a few people whacked each other over it. It wasn't until the advent of 100+ channel cable in 1984 and the crappy shows that came with it that people started losing interest in the tube.
The Internet has really fouled things up. In the last five years more people have been executed than in the entire period from 1962 to 1994. Probably from people whacking each other while waiting for their files to download. Have you ever heard "You've Got Mail!" played backwards?
I'm hoping that ubiquitous broadband will bring television to the Internet and reverse this trend.
Innovation continues, problems are harder (Score:2)
Let us take a few of the examples in the article, starting with the Concorde. Sustained supersonic flight is a very difficult problem requiring exotic and expensive materials, fuels and aerodynamics. The Concorde is a 25 year old hotrod, and was never an economic success. Designed in the early '60s, the all titanium SR-71 Black Bird costs a million plus dollars per mission to fly, and remains the fastest thing on Earth to this day. Speeds above mach 3 require the development of even more amazing materials. CHEAP hypersonic flight (as in non-military, commercial flight) is much more difficult still. These problems are more difficult in principle than those faced by the Wright brothers.
The development of antibiotics was a huge breakthrough in medicine, as was the invention of modern anesthetics. The microbe has largely been defeated for the moment. Major medical problems that face us now are viruses like HIV, prions (e.g.. Mad Cow disease), fungi, and things like asthma, Alzheimer's etc. These diseases operate on a much smaller, subtler and more fundamental level, and require a qualitatively different knowledge of biology than did Smallpox.
Living and working on the Moon permanently is a different proposition than sending three men there for a few days. One can compare this to the difference between a polar expedition and an oil rig in the Arctic ocean. There is nothing on the Moon right now that justifies the effort.
Modern technology and modern convenieces are unavailable to the majority of humanity not primarily due to politics,but because they are expensive. "Power too cheap to meter" is the concept we are presently in search of. Maybe hydrogen fusion and room temperature superconductors can make this a reality.
These problems are fundamentally more difficult than the major inventions and discoveries of which the author speaks, and can only be accomplished using the technology we now have as a starting point.
So there you go. The problems facing us today are of a fundamentally different quality than the ones already solved in this century, particularly up to 1950. Just as the explosion of technology in the first half of the Twentieth Century depended on advances made during the last half of the Nineteenth, I think we have been building the tools for the explosion of the next 50 to 100 years. Computers and the Internet may not change the human condition as much as the electric light, but I bet they make possible the research that creates the next major breakthrough.
The Phantom
Re:He already said that in the article (Score:2)
Which is absolutely bullshit; because of the population growth allowed by the the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, the number of people who have died in all of human history is a smaller number than the number of humans alive today.
Stop and think about that. An innovation of the past 50 years is responsible for the existence of roughly one third of all humans who have ever lived in all of human history. Compared to that, things like the automobile and indoor plumbing have had only minimal impact.
Connections (Score:2)
Now wait a few years and you will see some interesting things. We already see the reactions of businesss to the increased communication abilities given by the internet. Non-Compete and Non-Disclosure agreement are in part a result of workers abilities to shop the world for employment opportunities. "Copyright protection" is the result of content providers inability to accept the fact the instant content access dilutes the value of a single work. How much is one work worth when thousands can be accessed in seconds. Increased competitition lowers prices.
Add DNA research, advance transportation techniques, advances in particle physics ...etc into the equation and we haven't seen anything yet!!!
Re:Well, of course (Score:2)
Without Doubt, Yes. (Score:2)
Well, that is the most utter hogwash. Instead the opposite is happening. The law of diminishing returns is gripping us - the jump from 500MHz computers to 1GHz computers will affect me much less than the jump from .5MHz computers to 1Mhz computers ever did. We see this effect in every area of our lives.
Technology is approaching its end game. The End of History Socially, Culturally and technologically is upon us gentlemen.
Re:Without Doubt, Yes. (Score:2)
If you read "The End of History" by Francis Fukuyama, you will see that he posits that the history of the world is coming to an end, in the sense that modern capitalist democracies are so comfortable that, well, nothing really happens. One of the fields in which this is occurring is technology.
Consider that the reason we develop technology is to support our preferred lifestyle. We have been inching ever closer to that lifestyle for seven thousand years, and the rate (in terms of ground covered) that we get closer is decreasing. So it seems to me (and good lord, I know very little) that things just aren't going to change all *that* much over the next few hundred years. In the *long* term, my opinion is quite different.
I'm very sorry if I appear a little short with my words, but I'm in a very bad mood just now and have a headache :-(
Re:Well...yeah....exactly (Score:2)
The really interesting thing to speculate about is this; What advance in technology would be equivalent to the advances that were made in the early part of the 20th century?
IMHO, a few likely candidates for this would be an improved method of travel (instead of a 6 hour flight to europe, a 30 min. trip instead) and advances in genetic medicine (artificially express genes in our bodies to heighten intelligence or protect ourselves from disease).
I beg to differ... (Score:3)
Plus ca change... (Score:3)
The apparent speed of "technological innovation", its impact on our lives, and whether or not this new technology is a positive thing...this is all purely in the eye of the beholder.
Society's still got the same basic problems it's always had. People still need food, shelter, some degree of climate control, and currency to pay for these things. Parents still want their children to be educated (one way or another), and kids still want to rebel. People for the most part still want to look attractive by the standards of the society at the time, to find an appropriate partner or partners and reproduce, to defend themselves against actual or perceived attacks (by other people or by "natural" forces), to have someone cure them when they're sick, to feel like a part of something larger than themselves, all that good stuff.
There are always society-threatening problems out there -- the crazy king/dictator/rebel leader in power over there who might be coming over *here* if we're not careful, the religious extremists telling us to "convert or die" (yes, this still exists pretty overtly in some places, and it exists in the US in a *slightly* more subtle form), the scary celebrity who is a "bad influence" on the young (Beethoven, anyone?), the "modern woman" who just won't behave, the "deplorable" state of education, the scientific discoveries that create ethical dilemmas for society...none of these complaints are new. The specifics change, the general pattern does not.
The WAY in which we do our work might change, and the specific hazards that are likely to kill us might be different, but most of us still spend a great deal of time working inside or outside the home, spending time with our (biological or chosen) families when we can if we aren't fighting with them, figuring out how to feed and clothe ourselves and maintain the roof over our head, traveling from one place to another, and fighting off death as long as we can.
I've read articles from the 1500s complaining that the "true meaning of Christmas" has been lost. I've read about Plato's attempts to censor certain types of music. In the grand scheme of things, people will always be people. Today's technology, whatever it is, will always be a solution only to yesterday's challenges -- today's challenges will always demand tomorrow's technology, which in some cases might be a return to something "forgotten" (herbal medicines anyone?) and in other cases might well be something we couldn't even conceive of today. We may have eliminated smallpox, but now there's AIDS to worry about. Food might seem to be "safer" now, but what of the constant scares regarding salmonella and exposure to pesticides? Wrist damage from carpal-tunnel syndrome might not be as life-threatening as injuries sustained by farmers or miners, but it is still threatening to the livelihood of someone who types or works on an assembly line for a living. And of course, there still ARE farmers and miners, who still face hazards that most of us with our desk jobs don't think about much.
Yes,but almost everything is just an improvement.. (Score:3)
Isn't a car just a horseless carriage? Your logic can be followed to indicate that the real inovation was pulling a box on wheels with an animal and putting people in it. Cars were just an improvment. The no car to car is bigger than a better car thing can get silly. It all depends on how you describe a car. Is it a box on wheels that carries people? Then the car itself was just an upgrade from the horse drawn wagon. When you look at the effect that having all the vehicles in the country using clean, renewable fuel would have on our environment, you understand why this is a major innovation indeed. The technology will not just change cars. It has the potential to change our society. If cars are no longer reliant on fossil fuels than what about power plants? Many still burn dirty coal. What about home heating? Oil and gas rule there. The automotive industry can drive society to better ways of doing things. That is a major shift.
You make it sound like AIDS spread because of bad medicine. It really spread from a lack of safe sex practices (even though there already were other STDs) and problems with blood screenings. I think that AIDS treatment is a major inovation even though it is a younger disease. Africa is being ravaged by this disease. If they can get the price of current treatments down and get them distributed, millions of lives and the fate of an entire continent could be changed. I think that ranks.
Granted, the battle with lung cancer in paticular is not going well. But doesn't that make the treatments forming that much more important? Here [applesforhealth.com] is an example of a new treatment. One of the major reasons why this cancer in paticular has become such a killer is wide spread smoking. Around a quarter of college kids smoke. I watched my grandmother die of emphysema from smoking so I am pretty sensitive to smoking related diseases. I only wish this type of cancer got the same focus as others. I know women that will never miss a mamogram but will continue smoking. The battles against some cancers as gone better, though. What makes a Lance Armstrong so special is that his case shows how one can beat types of cancer once known as death sentences. It's an insult to the thousands of doctors and scientists that have worked hard to beat these killers to ignore their work and accomplishments.
Re:I wouldn't be able to survive 50 years ago (Score:3)
Context is everything. Its a moot point to say that you couldn't 'live' in 1950 for lack of all of today's technologies' convenience. Of course you couln't, you're too used to what you have now.
But to assume 'easier' is interesting, for I would argue that it was far easier to walk over to my neighbour's house and ask him for high lawnmower rather than buy a computer, know how to set it up, get an ISP, learn how to email, and email him. I'd rather say that technology today continues to make us lazier, when it comes to going out of our houses, or moving in a physical fasion. Name a technology today that actually makes the task it purpotes to do easier, from a comprehension of the steps to accomplish that task.
Think of an accountant from the 1950s that not only has to understand the principals of accounting, as he did before, but now has to know how to use Office 2000 and Excel. It saves him time in the long run, maybe, he has to invest alot more learning and application of knowledge in order to achieve his goal. And at any rate, there is a fairly widely supported theory that the time the use of a computer saves is recouped by the very same computer in learning and maintainance tasks.)
Chances are, all modern day technology does is let you do it all from one place, or faster, or cheaper
If something has never been said/seen/heard before, best stop to think about why that is.
I'm struck by how little we do with the technology (Score:3)
This included doing literally tens of thousands of pages a day markup-style word processing for which the supercomputers weren't particularly well suited.
Today, I carry at least 30 x the CPU processing power of those supercomputers. Along with more disk space and a network interface (100 Mhz Ethernet) that was probably more than the aggregate networking performed at that University.
Am I even doing 1/1000th of the useful work with all this power? Sure, that computing power was so precious that the staff at the University worked hard to keep it at full utilization at all times while my laptop sits idle most of the day, but that's kind of the point.
Sure, distributed.net and the like try to use all this unused potential, but we're still nowhere near as effective with our resources as we once were.
I realize that there are excuses. When resources are so plentiful, we tend to get wasteful, but shouldn't we be more mindful of using our resources more effectively? It's not just my laptop. But even the servers of 10 years ago to shame, especially in price/performance, but are we really doing that much more with them? Or have we built up layer upon layer of abstraction, middleware, DB Servers, etc. to more than exhaust the advantages. I know that the users (remember them anybody?) are not really much more effective with today's applications than with the character mode applications of ten years ago. In most cases, those character-based applications were more responsive than the applications we're rolling out today.
Sometimes, I think we've long since passed the point of diminishing returns with computing technology. We're applying more and more power to get far fewer incremental improvements.
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Re:Well, of course (Score:3)
What we're doing is using it differently (Score:3)
Yep, so did mine, thirty years ago. And the closest I could get to 'em was the window through which I passes the card deck... Today, I have three computers sitting on my desk, and I use them all in different ways -- but I use them directly.
Twenty years ago, engineers wrote proposals and reports longhand, and made rough sketches and graphs; secretaries typed them; draftsmen and illustrators did pen-and-ink renderings of the graphics. The engineers proofed these and redlined them, and the corrections were often done directly on the originals. Design work was mostly hand-work, with lots of extrapolation and interpolation of graphical data; the few computer runs were expensive in both time and dollars, when they were done at all.
Today, the engineers write their proposals and reports on their desktop computers; edit them there; produce the graphics there and refine it themselves; assemble the graphics and text into a final document; and generally print it out themselves, unless they distribute it electronically -- which they also do themselves. And the bar has been raised for the final product: corrections-by-hand aren't acceptable, and the graphics really need color. The engineering itself involves multiple iterations, with much (even most) of the detailed design actually being done on computer models instead of physical prototypes. And the engineer does most of this work directly, too, unless they truly need a supercomputer run.
It's gotten to where I can work as a single individual and replace an office full of support staff -- which is exactly what I do. Is that wasteful of computers? I don't think so, even though one of my computers basically acts as a file, fax and printer server for one person. It's worth what it costs me to use it for nothing else... it keeps the load of my workstation, and saves me the few minutes a day that it cost me over a few months to buy.
The other point I want to make is this: the analysts who say productivity isn't going up with computer use, are are missing the points I've made above -- particularly the one about the bar being raised.
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Re:Well...yeah (Score:3)
Let's suppose that 10 years from now we look back at this article, when we have definitely discovered a method to extend life to 150+ years, have wiped out almost all known diseases, and have built the first fusion reactors. These advances wouldn't have been possible without the assistance of computers for process modelling and analysis. Then this article will look like a bunch of horseshit. For another example, we are on the verge of widespread use of fuel cell technology (if the megacorps allow it). This is a tech that has been around since at least the 1970's (from the space program and probably much earlier than that), but we've just recently made advances that make it efficient enough for mass use. Plus, the large corporations made precious little if any progress in furthering the energy efficiency of appliances (especially automobiles) until the governments of the world, especially the US, started to enact laws requiring it.
Let's also consider the advances such as splitting the atom that the article neglects to mention. Sure atomics research allowed us to make horrific bombs that can kill millions of people in a single enormous explosion (which ironically can also be considered progress), but it also brought an unprecedented era of world peace with only minor localized skirmishes - the large powers were held in check by the frighteningly horrible capabilities of these bombs. It also brought nuclear power, a somewhat dubious benefit in many respects, but it also has brought power to areas of the world where there were very few if any real alternatives to power generation, and it is relatively clean technology.
Another thing the author likes to overlook are the problems that existed in the first half of the century. Early in the 20th century the air in many major urban centers was so bad that trees wouldn't even grow! People died of exposure to the smoke and toxins belching from factories. I'm not trying to say that it hasn't gotten worse in some areas, but those areas are more densely populated than they were at the turn of the century. Furthermore, a great deal of that pollution can be attributed to automobiles which are continuously becoming less polluting. In general, environmental pollution is declining and the trend seems to be towards further improvements in this area.
One of the funniest lines had to be this one -- Notes economist Alan Blinder: "No modern IT innovation has, or I dare say will, come close to such a gain!" What an ass. First of all, the Internet has effectively accomplished something on the same scale. The telegraph was a simple point-to-point device that allowed communication between two people simultaneously. This was the situation until about the 1970's, when telephone tech advanced to party lines allowing several parties (say up to 10) to converse simultaneously. The Internet allows fscking spammers to send a message to millions of people simultaneously, also instantly, or thousands of people to chat in real-time, in text or voice. I hope this knob lives long enough to see the day when we break the speed of light and messages (dare I hope for matter also?) can be transported instantly across infinite distances. Am I dreaming? Maybe, but there are very bright minds working on this very problem (some believe they already have solved it), and yet what benefit does it confer to the average person? At the moment, none really. I can already send a message in seconds to the other side of the world, and that's the furthest that I could conceivably need to send it at the moment. But if we ever get off this big stinkin rock and start to colonize other planets, it would be an important advance indeed.
Finally, sometimes advances come in clumps rather than at a regular pace. Einstein's theories were all developed over a short period of time, and we haven't seen any similar advances in scientific theories since that time that could have such a direct and immediate impact on day-to-day existence. Quite the opposite of the author, I see new innovations and invention as very likely being just around the corner that could change my life and the lives of people around the globe just as dramatically as some of the inventions in the first half of the century.
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As Technology Advances, Do We Stagnate? (Score:3)
Don't get me wrong, I work with technology and I love those little gadgets more than most people. But since I work with technology I get to see how these wonderfull devices are used.
We have all this potential now to communicate ideas, to share knowledge, to educate. We have devices that are supposed to free ourselves, to make the most of our time, to improve our lives. What does that technology really do? It improves bottom lines, it ties us to the desk, forces us to work longer hours even when at home, it takes us away from our friends and families, forces us to constantly focus on learning about technology instead of about each other and how to better society.
We humans are so good at creating things, at innovating. Yet we are so horrible at dealing with ourselves and learning about how to control the things we create. It is not technology that I fear, it is the human capacity to do harm with technology due to a lack of control. So we race ahead to invent new things but refuse to reinvent ourselves and our society. Is this the best course for us?
Re:This argument is real short-sighted. (Score:4)
Now the argument that not much happened between 100 CE and 1700 CE is just flat wrong. Off the top of my hungover head. Printing Press, Compass, Rockets, Gunpowder and Microscope are pretty important.
I'd say without the lightblub...advanced communications networks or gene therapy wouldn't happen. After all there is a LED blinking in that fibre switch that's sending the light down the fibre that gets these packets around.
I think that invention is moving along quite quicky, it's just that when you are so far advanced it's hard to make things really jump out. It's also hard to sit there as the advance happens and say...wow...that's gonna change the world.
When they sent the first email 30 years ago...did anyone there say...Wow...This is gonna change the world! Nope. When Chuck Yeager flew through faster than sound did anyone say...Wow this is going to change military aviation? Nope. It was just another day.
IMHO you can't sit there and say invention is slowing...or speading up...because invention isn't a finite thing that can be measured that way.
Re:Much room for innovation left (Score:4)
It's amazing how the first thought that pops into the minds of people when faced with the possibility of instantaneous teleportation is "wow, I can avoid the traffic going to work". It is incredibly shortsighted.
David Brin wrote a wonderful short story where he theorizes about a world where cheap, reliable teleportation was commonplace. Customs control is impossible, smuggling is rife, crime increases exponentially, police are powerless, war supplies cannot be stopped, privacy is destroyed, people visit the few last pieces of untouched wilderness in droves thus destroying it.
Teleportation would be the end of civilisation as we know it. For the previous person to equate it with something as trivial as the light bulb! I think you were incredibly restrained to not call him a freaking idiot.
What about 150 years ago? (Score:4)
The greatest, single most important invention in all the history of mankind was the invention of railroads, some 150 years ago.
150 years ago, for the first time in history, it was possible to transport quickly large quantities of merchandise, food, and people over long distances on earth.
The average speed of land transportation jumped more than 15fold, as trains were able to crisscross countries at speeds 15 to 20 times of the usual stagecoaches, trucks or canal boats which were then the norm.
Food could be readily transported from one place to the other to avert famines; the famines that occured thereafter were political in nature, not because food could not have been brought.
For the first time in history, people did not face the prospect of automatic starvation if their crops failed; they could resort on the supplies from elsewhere.
Railroads could supply the needs of ever-growing cities, such as New-York, London, Berlin, Paris or Chicago. Hitero, the size of cities was limited by the same factor any living organism was limited in size: by it's food supply.
It's not for nothing that, around that time, people embarked into railroad building with a quasi-religious fervor.
No, the greatest inventions occured between 1850 and 1950. After that, you only had refinements of existing stuff. Nothing really significant was invented after 1950, except perhaps, DNA genetic engineering.
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No, I disagree. (Score:4)
The question is the net effect and the author answers quite well. It's not disparaging the science of today at all. The article does not say that today's scientists are stupid, lazy, incompetent, underfunded, etc. The article merely puts the benefits of today's science into historical context, and addresses the thousands of internet and technology pundits in one fell swoop.
The media and a great many pundits have been waxing ecstatic about how revolutionary computers and the internet have BEEN (or will be in the very near future). The problem with this kind of talk is that it distorts our thinking and our priorities.
For instance, I never hear the end of the so-called "digital divide." A day never seems to go by when Al Gore, or some other politician, is talking about how we need the internet in every classroom and village (in Africa or what have you). Well as a matter of priorities, basic sustenance, health, and literacy are far more important innovations that have yet to reach these same people. Yet our American domestic policy, insists on spending countless resources today on a "revolution" that is certainly not yet revolutionary. Whether it's going to be revoltionary at all is debatable, but to spend hundreds of millions of dollars networking and providing soon to be obselete computers at great cost is foolish at best.
Similarly, we saw, and still are seeing to some extent, billions of dollars being ponied up for the "internet revolution" though the infamous Dot Coms. Meanwhile other technologies have suffered from lack of funding. For instance, I personally know a few biotech and medical devices companies that had a very difficult time getting capital from venture capitalists and the like, because they were too crazed over Dot Coms. More real dollars have been spent on these Dot Coms than so many other proven revolutions... So yes, not only is this an interesting question, it's a relevant one too. It's a matter of priorities and clear thinking.
Nor does this mean that, since all "basic" needs have been meet, nothing more dramatic can be done. Life expectancy can be increased substantially--medicine is still quite primitive. Issues like traffic jams can theoretically be resolved. AI can be invented (theoretically). Etc. etc. etc. All these things can be HUGE benefits for society that can be _felt_ by the common man--even if he is ignorant as to the reasons. It simply has not happened to as great as an extent in the past 50 years as it was in the 50 years before that.
Well, of course (Score:4)
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To see the impact, we have to wait awhile (Score:4)
Some of the biggest technologies will most likely include e-mail and the web. Yes, the web is far too over-hyped, but it does offer a very large net of knowledge. 50 years ago, you could walk into a library and find a small assortment of knowledge, but if they didn't have what you were looking for, you were up a creek unless you had a lot of time on your hands. The web changes that (or more correctly, will). Simple things like forums or mailing list archives of accumulated knowledge will be the most useful, but thats only my prediction. (Those things are new inventions. A central repsoitory of conversation has never before been attempted. If any conversations were ever recorded in any way (meeting minutes, etc), they were usualy stuffed in a big filing cabinet and never were shared).
inventions take a while to take hold (Score:4)
That isn't to say that there aren't problems. The article points out correctly that preventive healthcare and public health is much more important to increasing life span than other medical advances. And economic opportunism and vested interests may well keep inventions from reaching their true potential for decades to come.
How superficial the article is, you can see from its concluding remarks. While Thomas Edison was cleary important in popularizing and marketing inventions, much of what he was successful with had been invented many years prior to him--including the light bulb.
It's called "Perspective" (Score:5)
The reason the 'historical' inventions were so much bigger is because we are only talking about the big ones.
Right now. Computers vs Radio. Which is more important in day to day life? Fast Forward 100 years and lets see how bit of an impact the Internet (or rather instantaneous and persistant global communication) had on society.
This article is fine in that it cuts away some of the hype, but the 'big' inventions of today are just as big as the 'big' inventions of yesterday, (even if the small inventions aren't.)
Another Utterly Idiotic Article (Score:5)
The fact of the matter is that the discoveries of the past 50 well surpass those of the previous 50. Where would modern society be without the laser and the IC? Not to mention the incredible impact the previously unknown field of molecular biology is having on medicine as well as politics. The advances in the field of chemistry have been equally rapid. NMR, GC-MS, polymer science etc. have had a huge impact on modern life.
Not only that, but many of the inventions the cited (automobile, sanitation, lightbulb, etc. were made BEFORE 1900. In some cases CENTURIES before! The ROMANS had indoor pumbing fer crissakes).
Not only that, but it refers to failures in urban planning in the US as evidence of lack of innovation. We, I think if he were to travel on the high speed rail systems of Europe or Japan, he might realize these problems are POLITICAL, not technological.
His argument regarding productivity is nonsense too. Look at the percentage of farm workers in 1950 vs. today. Or the average standard of living. Bullocks I say!
The fact is that this article misses the point completely. Modern technology has surpassed the obvious day of the stinking, belching machine, and moved on to the much more rewarding realm of the molecule. Scientific advances come in the form of fabrics with undreamed of mechanical properties (Aramid etc), drugs that work at an extrodinary level of sophistication, instruments that can image the processes occurring in the body in 3D with molecular discrimination level without using damaging radiation, etc.
HELL, the first world wide satellite television broadcast included the Beatles singing "All you need is Love". Now we bounce signals around the globe without even considering the magic involved.
Of all the articles I have seen posted on
Re:Another Utterly Idiotic Article (Score:5)
If you want to talk about the average person, you have to be very careful. The average person is a sustenance farmer in China who has no access to electricity, and does not own a telephone. The biggest things that have affected his life are programs of mass immunization, education in basic health care and sanitation, and better flood and land management practices.
And yes, these have occurred in the past 50 years, not in the time prior to 1950.
For the doubters (Score:5)
I'm busy making some of our wonderful techie toys, and certainly am not complaining about the graphite knee brace that lets me ski. But let's not kid ourselves: my parents and grandparents changed the way we live in utterly profound ways, and it's going to take something on the order of matter transmission to come close.
Re:Without Doubt, Yes. (Score:5)
Actually, Vinge has been right on. Take a read at the inventions of the year in Discover. Amazing discoveries in food, computers, physics, and about everything else will change the world around us in incredible ways. Technology is increasing at ever increasing rates. There are bumps in the road but it keeps moving. Continuous speech recognition is becoming a reality. I can call a 800 number and ask about movies, get the information I need, and never talk to a human being. Computers are interacting with us in more human way. Most tutorial programs now talk the user through the learning. As computer power grows, the little annoying paper clip will become your virtual personal assistant. It is happening already. Operating Systems and the software around them have become so customizable that each person's system is unique. They gain personality. I am not talking about wallpaper and screensaves, I mean the ways in which we interact. Web sites have moved from static digital representations of print to customized, unique, living, breathing swirls of personal information. When I visit
Shifting the goalposts... (Score:5)
Then, inventions from 1950-1980 (the Green Revolution, the word processor, the jet passenger plane, spacecraft, satellites) are not counted as "modern" innovations, despite the fact that the article starts by comparing 1900-1950 to 1950-2000.
Finally, older inventions like the telegraph are compared to modern ones like the Internet.
So, this guy gives us an argument that actually reads, "the inventions of 1830-1980 are more important as a group than the inventions of 1980-2000, so we've stopped innovating".
Wow, how profound. I can probably give a good argument that the inventions of 775-1830 AD (a time period similarly 7.5 times longer than the later period being compared to), including the transoceanic ship, the gun, classical physics, calculus, and the moveable-type printing press, were more important than the innovations from 1830-1980.
And, of course, the 7.5-times-longer time period from 7100 BC to 775 AD saw even more important innovation, seeing the invention of animal domestication, agriculture, the wheel, standing armies, writing, etc.