Safe, cheaper and boring may be an artifact of the physics of flight in Earth's atmosphere, combined with an intertwined US defense and aerospace industry. Why should we let corporate and government interests "unring" the general computing bell? Why should we let corporate and government interests stuff the genie of democratic publishing back in the lamp?
General purpose computing hardware got super cheap by way of the mass market, and mass production. General purpose programming got cheap and universally available by way of mass communication. In 1983 a C compiler on VMS cost some thousands of dollars. Today, GCC and Clang and Pcc are free, and they do optimizations that Tartan Labs could only dream about.
That's a hugely different path than the carefully-cultivated air travel industry took. I think you're underestimating the effects of the FAA and the DoD on how air travel looks today.
Safe, cheaper and boring may be an artifact of the physics of flight in Earth's atmosphere, combined with an intertwined US defense and aerospace industry. Why should we let corporate and government interests "unring" the general computing bell? Why should we let corporate and government interests stuff the genie of democratic publishing back in the lamp?
General purpose computing hardware got super cheap by way of the mass market, and mass production. General purpose programming got cheap and universally available by way of mass communication. In 1983 a C compiler on VMS cost some thousands of dollars. Today, GCC and Clang and Pcc are free, and they do optimizations that Tartan Labs could only dream about.
That's a hugely different path than the carefully-cultivated air travel industry took. I think you're underestimating the effects of the FAA and the DoD on how air travel looks today.