Waiting for the lights to go out
POSTED BY: citizen
UPDATED: Monday, May 27, 2024 15:33
VIEWED: 2329
PAGE 3 of 3
"If you ask me, progress peaked with frozen pizza." - John McClane
Chrisisall
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
"If you ask me, progress peaked with frozen pizza." - John McClane
Chrisisall
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
There's a lack of perspective here. Specialization and refinement of existing technologies isn't a bad thing. New ways to work old things is innovation in its own right.
How many thousands of years did it take to perfect the sword?
What about the bow? (I think we only recently capped its potential.)
Og's wheel is nice, but a rubber tire and spring suspension system makes it much more useful, no?
And these are all simple, simple inventions.
Now we come along and invent a microchip. Great. It may take another twenty years to fully optimize that technology. You may be looking forward to the bio-computer, but I'm still waiting for the potential of the regular computer to peak. I don't need quantum computing. I need a higher speed micro-computer to make City of Heroes lag a little less.
The fact is, our ability to refine is improving. Optimal sword designs took thousands of years to come by. We've come near to fully optimizing the airplane in about a hundred.
Frown on innovation, if you want, but it seems to me things are getting faster, not slowing down. Just look at the speed with which we refine our technology. We make the most out of it much more quickly than we used to.
--Anthony
"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Thanks anthony,
This is actually what I meant, but people took it the other way, and I'm seriously sick of arguing, so I ignored it. But yes, it is innovation. Once a task is done, there may not be another task like it that needs doing, but there may be a need for a better way to do it.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Oh innovation isn't dead, it's just relocating.
Yeah, to South Korea.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 19,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1.5 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, March 1949
But what ... is it good for?
- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
There is no need for any individual to have a computer in their home.
- Ken Olson, 1977, President, Digital Equipment Corp.
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
You left out Bill Gates (1981):
"640 kilobytes of computer memory ought to be enough for anybody."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
A few random thoughts…
1) What isn’t addressed in the article (or the study that is extensively referenced to support the article’s thesis) is what “innovation” really is. Is innovation something truly, completely new? If so, then almost nothing is innovation. Almost everything is an improvement (big or small) over previous technologies, or a new combination of previously unrelated technologies. If you buy this interpretation, then the difference between innovation and refinement isn’t a day/night thing… these are just two points on a more complex and continuous spectrum of progress.
2) The author of the article said (at one point):
“The evidence is mounting that our two sunny centuries of growth and wealth may end in a new Dark Age in which ignorance will replace knowledge, war will replace peace, sickness will replace health and famine will replace obesity. You don't think so? It's always happened in the past. What makes us so different? Nothing, I'm afraid.”
There seems to be a bit of fallacious logic in that statement. It tacitly acknowledges that the Dark Ages happened… and then ended. It does not seem to acknowledge the possibility that such a full cycle can repeat. It merely trumpets the possibility that progress can end. Then we are doomed. Few paragraphs were given over to the possibility that it might vigorously start up again as it has in the past.
3) So what is the engine for “innovation” (wherever we pin that human activity on the spectrum of “developing new stuff”)? I would propose that it is real need. What drove medical technology? More people, more crowding, more travel was making disease a non-local event. More dangerous activities (building big things, traveling long distances, fighting World Wars) was making trauma more horrific. So medical technology moved forward to meet the challenge. What would the next major challenge be that would require significant advance in medical technology? Seems like drug resistant microbes and genetically clever, new emergent viruses could do the trick. Who knows how medical technology will step up? I don’t know for sure… but if I were gambling, I’d say nanotechnology. A microbe can become resistant to a chemical. But it’s a lot tougher for a microbe to resist being cut into tiny pieces by a nanobot with knives for appendages.
We could play out the same scenario for oil. Right now, we are fighting for what’s left. When it’s not left anymore, we will have no other choice but to find something different. And the solution may not be a just new energy source… it may be several less “dense” sources of energy AND a new design for society that re-establishes the strength and efficiency of local communities. That would be true innovation… the application of an (apparently) unrelated technology to solve a problem in an existing technology. The article itself makes this point when it discusses the reinvention of Cuban society as a direct result of the embargo and the fall of its communist friends.
So why don’t we have quantum computers yet? Because we don’t need them yet. Ever more clever refinements of existing technologies are meeting the needs. When we have a genuine need for something truly new, then the possibility of real innovation increases.
4) One thing the article says rings distressingly true… one likely solution for many of the ills that our current stalling progress is creating is a dramatic and tragic reduction in the number of people on the planet. The planet will survive… of that I am sure. Even a world-wide nuclear winter would be nothing more than a blip in our planet’s health when viewed from a distance of a couple billion years… something like a planetary headcold. I think humanity is likely to survive (there’s some faith involved in that statement). When it comes to individuals and/or lifestyles, I am not confident.
5) The comment Dreamtrove made about evolution/creationism troubles me no end. Substituting the faith of a bronze-age culture in place of clear, scientific thinking as a valid techn
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Yeah, to South Korea.
You're not wrong.
But more power to 'em.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Effects of solar storms go well beyond dazzling auroras
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/effects-of-solar-storms-go-well-bey
ond-dazzling-auroras-x8f9kkvth
The Carrington Event
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME