The Myth of Technological Progress

Taki's Magazine ^ | August 30, 2009 | Scott Locklin

[Anti-Bubba182]

I agree with your assessment. His computer examples are the same as saying there is no advance involved in a fire hardened stick vs a machine gun bullet, both being weapons. The article is remarkably stupid.

[Graybeard58]

Many of you will still be alive in 50 years.

I'll be 115.

[discostu]

I actually followed the link, he’s got a hilarious couple of paragraphs about how the SR-71 is faster than the F-22 therefore planes haven’t advanced. He completely ignores how the SR-71 as a spy plane was designed specifically to be too fast to shoot down and has no weapons taking up space and weight, and the F-22 being a fighter plane is designed to... well shoot stuff down and so has weapons and other things that would slow it down.

And he even dismisses medical advances, carefully ignoring MRIs and a bunch of other stuff.

Maybe it’s supposed to be a comedy piece.

[x]

Looking forward, I can’t think of a single technology in the works today which will revolutionize life in the 21st century...

Silly. Genetic engineering could have enormous consequences. It's not a gadget you can hold in your hand or ride downtown, but it's going to be a big change for some people.

Similarly, if we get transportation that doesn't depend on petroleum, it won't be as dramatic as seeing that first car or airplane coming at you, but it would mean a major change in the way the world works.

And if the "people" of 2100 aren't really human beings, but some new synthesis of man and machine, that would also be a major change.

BTW, John Lukacs used to play this game, but he'd go back even further. If you saw the coming of the railroad, the telephone, the automobile, and the airplane, he'd say, you saw the world change more than anyone who came along afterward would.

That's true. The shift from an agricultural to an industrial world was greater than anything we've seen since.

It doesn't mean that technological progress has stopped, though.

[Tolsti2]

Nanotech and memsistors are two biggies that might make a huge leap. The LHC could also find some stuff for anti-gravity by 50 years as well. Hard to say at this point.

It kinda depends on what you want as well. Probably no moon bases thanks to hussein. Possibly a space elevator if nanotech works out though.

[norraad]

Same here, & will prolly be driving a gasoline powered car getting 35 MPG.

Secret, it's big oil that has determined MPG for the past 50 years as well.

It's a factor of fractions, so much kerosene/jetfuel/fuel oil v. the lighter stuff , gasoline , etc..

It all has to go somewhere, you can't compress a liquid, so the math has to be worked out in advance.

[Brett66]

Is he nuts? Look what size the cell phones were back then:

[Anti-Bubba182]

More likely it is a cranky old man than a comic.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Universal compulsory "education."

Add that to "affirmative action," and the prohibition against legitimate criticism of a large part of our population, and you get lowered standards for nearly every human endeavor.

I heard many people complain about affirmative acction because they thought it was unfair. I always knew that a more insidious side effect would be a gradual erosion of meritocracy as the dominant ethos of our culture.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

I'll be 115.

I'll be 81. Wanna hook up?

[PA Engineer]

Agreed. A few things more to consider that only the cynical would ignore or be blinded.

Cardiac Stents
Human Genome
LCD displays
LED Bulbs
Pharmaceuticals
Gore Tex
Joint Replacements
Horizontal drilling


Technological development is discovery.

[Age of Reason]

Technology is all, or almost all, about making more out of less, as the planet becomes increasingly overpopulated.

[Tolsti2]

I’d go crazy without my Tivo, lol.. I don’t know how I made it without DVR’s until 1999.

[Right Wing Assault]

In the early 50s in the city, my dad had to shovel coal into the coal furnace. The ice man came every other day. Mom and I had to walk to the store (no car) to buy meat fresh every day since the icebox couldn't keep it fresh very long. Couldn't keep ice cream. If my dad needed a piece of lumber, we took two different streetcars (no car, as I said) to the lumber yard and brought it back on the streetcars. In the winter time the streetcars were heated by little coal stoves. The scrap collector (paper, rags! Our guy never said "paper eggs") drove a wagon pulled by a horse. Same with the produce guy ("apples, oranges, peaches, plums, and nectarines --- and fresh - straw - berries!" he would yell). There were no interstate highways. The bums were actually gentlemen, though, and my mom would give them handouts. And no, we never locked our doors. We didn't have any keys for the house.

When we sold the house in 1961, crime in the neighborhood was rampant, so we had to get keys made. Our next door neighbors, who were a very nice young black couple, had their house cleaned out by burglars while they slept. Two houses down a guy was sent to prison for murder. I was scared to death to leave the house. In 1961 I didn't see the quality of life you mention.

I will take my quality of life today over that of the '50s any day.

[Tolsti2]

If he’s serious, then he can’t be argued with. He’ll say scramjets or space planes aren’t really knew since we’ve had paper gliders for 500 years or something.

All that stuff he listed being so great in from 09 to 59 was built on earlier stuff. Electricity led to the big leap for most of it. If he thinks history has many leaps as big as electricity and knowing the physical laws of the atom then, he’s going to be disappointed.

[Right Wing Assault]

Mimi. I couldn't wait for each issue to show up!

[bert]

Drivel to get some words on paper and get paid.

My I Phone has more power and network ability than anything that was even conceived in 1959 and it is obsolete

[Nepeta]

I remember 1960 vividly, and seriously disagree that things have not changed.

Medical science has changed tremendously. My father nearly died in 1961 of a coronary, and the treatment then was to keep him in a hospital bed for 6 weeks! He was only in his mid-40s. He was told to avoid any exertion afterward.

Science has moved on tremendously. In 1960, Venus was still thought to be cool enough to be habitable, and the only images of Mars were taken through the fog of the Earth's atmosphere.

Communication has changed. Long distance calls inside the country were an event in 1960. In the 1990s, one of my coworkers dialed direct her parents in India after an earthquake to check on them.

And there was NO clumping cat litter in 1960!!!

[fr_freak]

In 1943 Thomas Watson, the chairman of IBM, is reputed to have predicted, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Boy, he sure blew that one, and he was the world's expert on the topic.

Actually, he was right, given the nature of computers at the time. Computers are ubiquitous now because they are relatively cheap and small. At the time this guy was talking, computers filled a room and cost a fortune. Would you have a computer in your house if it filled a room and cost $1 million? Or at your small business? If someone had asked him, "Hey, what if we made the computer 10,000 times more powerful, as small as a briefcase, and only at the cost of the average person's weekly salary, how much demand would there be?" he'd probably have answered "Everyone would have one then."

[Right Wing Assault]

Did he mention GPS, satellite weather pictures, minimally invasive surgery. The latter turned things like gall bladder surgery from a major event to a one day deal.