On the other hand, try make that same comparison between the 1930s with the 1970s and you would fall off your chair... Or between the 1890s and the 1930s... That's what progress used to look like, sadly [4].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_computed_tomography
[4] http://www.cepr.org/sites/default/files/policy_insights/Poli...
Who is to say there are no technologies that are now in their infancy that won't reach widespread adoption 40 years from now? Who is to say what's in its infancy today won't be just as impressive or groundbreaking as what was in its infancy 40 years ago?
There were some computers which could communicate over modems at 300 - 9600 baud or so, at distance.
The technologies which enabled the Internet were being developed in the 1960s. As of 1977, this was the entire ARPANET, about 53 nodes by my count: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arpanet_logical_map,_march...
The real guts started filling in during the 1980s, particularly BSD Unix (with a TCP/IP stack), Perl, and by the end of the decade, the first Web server and clients.
The difference between technological developments of the latter half of the 20th century and those from 1800 - 1950, is that the former involved new sources of energy, new means of producing and distributing it, and exceptional advances in materials. From 1950 onward most major advances have been in information processing and communications, though the Green Revolution likely also counts. Nothing to sneeze at, but limited all the same: information processing lets you change how you manage matter, but the overall impact is still restricted to the theoretical maximum efficiency of those physical processes.
Faith that technology will provide us with an unlimited future is ... wishful thinking.
Programming tools, languages and paradigms (client side v. server side, MVC v. layered, and so on) have evolved for sure, but the WWW? Nothing fundamentally new since the early 90's when CGI made its appearance. The web works today as it did then, albeit with fatter pipes and obese page payloads.
But consider: during the huge technological advances of the early industrial revolution, much of the attention we pay today to the basic needs of society was not there. No social safety net meant that people starved. No (or few) vaccinations meant that medical treatment was more necessary. But the lack of anesthesia, antiseptics, antibiotics, etc. made medical treatment painful, dangerous, and often useless.
Certainly poor people today have it bad. But in some ways the poor of the western world (at least) enjoy a quality of life that people in past centuries could only dream of.
So, putting that together with your argument, I wonder: could a slowdown in innovation today be due to the fact that society is expending its energy meeting people's needs? In the past, in contrast, needs were ignored, and that energy was expended on innovation.
This idea would seem to be supported by the fact that so much of the innovation of recent decades has come out of the U.S., which arguably has one of the least effective social safety nets in the western world.
EDIT. Just in case anyone is wondering: for goodness sake I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be concerned about people's needs. But if the above idea is how the world really works, then there is no point in denying it.
No no, I get your point. No need to worry.
I would add a counter-argument here though that there was definitely more time to think in the past. There was more peace of mind because people had a less hurried lifestyle. Also, things had always been bad and were getting much better relative to the past. For example, for new parents today, think of all the various concerns that are constantly hitting them from all sides. This wasn't the case 150 years ago and I think that allowed for people to devote a least some portion of their mental energy towards innovation. And if not innovation, at least towards being socially engaged in the discussion about innovation.
This is an issue that I don't see being addressed at all in the U.S. On the contrary, we see articles (rather often on HN) on how to squeeze more productivity out of those silly little bits of free time in our days.
This is the important bit, and it matters a lot more than some of the anecdata the original post mentioned. Commercial airliners haven't got faster than Concorde, they've got slower. They've also got smaller wingspans and less buoyancy than Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose. As impressive as the engineering accomplishments were, they optimized for the wrong goals; today's airliners might not be as interesting but they are fuel efficient, reliable and don't need to float. And regular people fly on them, regularly.
The billions that gets spent on making aero engines 1% more efficient every year might not be as glamorous as Concorde, but cheaper tickets for the general public (and satellite internet in BA1 for those senior executives rich enough to have previously considered Concorde on that route) actually delivered better outcomes.
If instead of looking at progression in maximum speeds one looks at how much people fly, we're in a phase of acceleration.
And anyway what's wong with incremental improvements across the board? Just look at medicine, and life expectancy!
The automobile has changed as much in the last 20 years as in the previous 100. Ubiquitous embedded computing has transformed essentially everything, especially manufacturing. Hell, there's even a new flurry of innovation in spaceflight, with a very high chance that we'll see Martian colonies in the next few decades. That alone is nothing to sneeze at.
But let me take a moment to drill down on one specific thing: pollution. In the mid-20th century pollution and abuse of the environment in the developed world was becoming a very serious, even existential problem. Ocean dumping was ubiquitous. Millions of deaths per year were occurring due to the sad state of air quality in major cities like LA, Pittsburgh, London, etc. There were disastrous individual events like the great smog of London in 1952. Many people aren't aware that that event killed more people than 9/11, that's how serious it was. It also made over 100k people seriously ill, aside from the impact it had on quality of life for people living in London in general. Since then there has been a massive uptick in the population of Los Angeles, there has been a massive increase in car ownership and total vehicle-miles driven, a massive increase in freight volumes on railroads and trucks. And yet, despite all that there has been an even more massive improvement in air quality, enabled by technological innovation.
There are many, many more amazing stories along the same lines, with the cornerstone in every case being technology developed in the late 20th century as an enabling factor.
One of the downsides of technology that works so well and so smoothly (which late 20th/early 21st century automobiles would fall in the category of) is that it can be difficult to garner the attention it deserves. Smooth functioning is the absence of problems, so it becomes too easy to simply set the baseline at the point where the technology is working (taking it for granted). But these amazing technologies (automobiles, the internet, etc.) are the product of herculean amounts of effort from an enormous number of incredibly skilled people. It should be amazing that we have handheld computers with wireless internet connectivity at broadband speeds, yet this is just the normal state of being in the developed world these days.
I have often wondered what made the West so great during its golden age of innovation (and to answer what we're missing today) and think it can be attributed to a single-mindedness in our culture and leadership towards a common goal.
The Industrial Revolution (and American Revolution) would not have been possible without the overwhelmingly popular Age of Enlightenment (a cultural movement of intellectual reform that emphasized reason over tradition). Such multi-national cooperation and exchange of ideas had been previously unprecedented. The intellectuals of each country banded together because they had a common enemy (entrenched tradition, religion, and monarchy).
Similar patterns (large-scale cooperation towards a common goal) can be found in the Second Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Age, and the Space Race.
So the question remains: what singular goal(s) do we have today?
The Internet has a great deal of potential to be used as a vehicle for a new intellectual revolution that may drive a new age of progress. I've seen a few hints of this in the OSS community and Silicon Valley but so far neither have found a common goal that resonates strongly enough.
tl;dr : The want of progress is not specific enough to inspire. We need a new, overarching goal to drive the next age of progress.
Though I call into question whether or not that responsibility (to coordinate action towards the advancement of human civilization) should be left solely with our heroes. I believe this narrative will never truly change until every individual takes some share in that responsibility.
So, where is the Elon Musk of high-energy physics? Where is the Elon Musk of terraforming, both off-planet and on Earth to reverse climate change? What of cancer, antibiotics, longevity treatment, machine intelligence? Et cetera. These are equally important problems we face, and if we rely on 'heroes' to take them on, we might be waiting for a long time. And again, by 'heroes' I don't mean people with the ability and the intelligence and the desire to solve these problems - we have plenty of those - rather people with those qualities and the resources to truly take them on. Those are rare, indeed. Contrast Elon Musk with Notch, who are of comparable means now, yet Notch has quite clearly stated that if anything he does starts to have an impact again, he will shitcan it immediately. What a profoundly awful attitude to have. Sadly, I think you'll find more like him in that caste than Elon.
As I say, it seems like an enormous waste. Capital markets alone are not up to the task. For what it's worth, I'm not trying to subtly advocate for socialism or something either. I don't know what the solution to the problem is, but it is a problem.
Excellent points regarding the exceptional breadth of requirements necessary to effect change.
I don't think this precludes my earlier belief concerning individual responsibility for our collective progress. This is a conversation that everyone needs to participate in precisely because there is such a rare chance any one individual will have the necessary pre-requisites to take action.
Even the most plebian among us may one day find themselves flush with cash, and when they do, they could wield those resources responsibly. The concept of "noblesse oblige" (or, the more modern Spider-Man variant: "with great power comes great responsibility") comes into mind here. Interestingly, Elon made a veiled reference to this shared outlook in his "sinking ship" metaphor recently on Colbert.
I too was deeply troubled by Notch's attitude toward unwanted success (and more importantly, the worrying precedent it sets for others). It's disappointing that he has no apparent desire to utilize his position in a useful manner but I wonder how much of that mindset is a product of our current environment.
So, where is the Elon Musk of high-energy physics? Where is the Elon Musk of terraforming, both off-planet and on Earth to reverse climate change? What of cancer, antibiotics, longevity treatment, machine intelligence? Et cetera
At the risk of sounding rather trite: the next Elon Musk might be reading this page right now.
Elon is not an island. He had to have gotten his attitudes from somewhere. Teaching kids about our shared responsibility and to dream big about real problems is an act that every adult can (and should) participate in. Those who are in a position to mentor or inspire another (even if it's a boss to an employee, VC to a founder, or friend to friend) should also take part.
Who knows what he may use his position for in the future? He seems to me an intelligent, honest, passionate person. Maybe he will enjoy a quiet retirement. Maybe he will go on to do incredibe things in other arenas after taking some time to step back. A little empathy is in order, in my opinion.
Rose colored glasses of history, but I would hazard to say that the average knowledge + ambition + creativity of a person today is far lower than in the various retrospective golden ages.
... you can't find a genius and then teach him or her. You teach everyone, then genius blooms.
I actually see plenty of ambition in the valley and elsewhere— ambition to be the next billion-dollar success story.
What I don't see is a lot of purpose-consciousness + ambition. It's been offered that the purpose of all for-profit companies is to make money; any venture intending to create value for anything but its shareholders is therefore a non-profit.
I think this is wrong. For-profit companies can work toward a clear, common goal without sacrificing profit. I think the modern web (which was built by contributions from hundreds of companies) is a great example of this. SpaceX and Boeing (funded jointly by NASA) working in tandem to enable private space travel is another.
I believe that relatively soon we'll have genetics-driven psychiatry and medicine. Depressed people won't automatically be prescribed SSRIs, but what is deemed most suitable based on their genetic profile. Nobody will need to ask you if you're allergic to penicillin or anaesthetics, those mistakes won't happen anymore.
Then there's deep neural networks. We now have computer programs that can recognize what's in an image more accurately than human beings. Domestic robots might well happen during our lifetime. They're going to be basic at first, but you can't stop progress.
Solar panels piece does not matter much until batteries are much better, if you want power at night or when the sun isn't full strength.
There's a difference between inventing the internal combustion engine, and making that engine consume 10% less fuel. Even if the latter ends up being a more challenging feat, at the end of the day it is making an improvement to something that already exists. It's a "1+n" technology, as opposed to a "0 to 1" technology.
A lot of these were actually invented/designed in the 70s or earlier, or are iterations of breakthrough ideas from those years. He's talking about actual breakthrough innovations.
Of course, since we don't know which of those technologies will be viable, we mentally don't count them.
The oil, natgas, and coal are rapidly running out. The shale/fracking thing is an accounting fraud on the verge of blowing up, if you happen to think that's a real answer. None of the outfits involved actually turn a real profit on energy production. Renewables are largely a scam based on government subsidy. Existing nuclear technologies are also a scam based on government liability indemnities. Also, the fissile material situation is pretty dicey going forward.
The techno fantasy future is going to fade away in the coming decades and we're going to confront real resource and energy limits that change our way of life to something more resembling that of our ancestors.
EDIT:
Luckily, weapons systems are much more effective than they were in the 1970s, so I guess we will be able to fend off the poor.
EDIT2:
Look, downvote all you want...the elephant in the room is that the rewards and advances in technology are not and can not be distributed evenly. Even in a first-world nation such as the US, so many of the products listed in my parent post are out-of-reach of anyone without significant financial means. CT scans, for example--what does imaging matter if you can't afford it?
You think that the starving huddled masses are just going to sit outside the walls and go "Man, sure wish I could live there?". That's never how history has worked out, you nitwits.
This is a reason to be optimistic. w00t for humanity! Also b000 to your fearful and unfounded outlook on humanity.
What he says is true, and innovation seems to affect fewer and fewer people - the rest can only dream of it.
Good drugs are being banned, electric cars are being laughed at by people who can't fathom that an electric motor can put out the same performance as a V6, smartphones can be used as full digital assistants yet they're used for phone calls/Skype and alarms, SpaceX - what's that, etc.
Not to mention that "over 3B (billion) people are below the poverty line..." as angersock said.
Those who are lucky enough to be touched by innovation surround themselves in a bubble and dismiss everyone else.
Those who are lucky enough to be touched by innovation
surround themselves in a bubble and dismiss everyone else.
Despite of (political correct) statistics made by the world bank, the inequality is rising in the world. Only look at the US. Once the US had a broad middle class. Today, the middle class is shrinking more and more and is replaced by quarters for the poor and others for the rich. The only reason, that it is not seen by most people is, that they stick in their own peer-group -- and do not look to much into the lives of others. Also, there is no country in the world that has that many people in prisons ...
Your example of a CT scan got me to think that way. I don't think it's practical to assume that such a device would be widely distributed; heck, I'm not even sure it's possible to fuel them all with liquid He if we tried to proliferate it. But I would bet anything the tech matures and branches such that the cost incrementally drops and the quality incrementally goes up. Or it leads to a breakthrough tech that supplants it (prolly more likely).
So I'm optimistic that the incremental improvements will compound faster than unrest; I think that's what's historically different now than times past - the compound improvements are taking less than a generation. We've made the jumps in tech, now to refine it to be available to all. (Cell phones are a pretty good example of this happening, I think.)
But I suppose there's no telling other than time passing. I prefer optimism, as the alternative is heartbreaking, as you note.
Desktop computers. Laptops. Cell phones. CT scanners. The internet. The Large Hadron Collider. The Hubble Space Telescope. Progress has slowed since the 1970s? Really?
Progress in physical things has not so much slowed since the 1970s; it has gone into improving efficiency, convenience, and reliability. For example: In the 1970s, you were supposed to tune a car engine (plugs, points, timing) regularly. On my 2005, I had to do it after 100,000 miles. It used to be a great achievement to keep a car running for 100,000 miles; now it's just time for the first tuneup. For another: My 2005 is far more stable and easy to drive than what I had in the 1970s. This means I crash less often. That's progress.