Has technological progress in the last 30 years been faster than the previous 30?

Great Debates
21

Absolutely. My point was that if you look at what was being perfected / commercialized in the 1954-1984 decade, it was mostly stuff developed 10-20 years earlier. TV was developed in the late 1930s, for example, and jet airliners were a fusion of new-ish jet technology given a wartime boost, and the older piston-engined airliners.

Similarly, what we’re seeing now is mostly the commercialization of stuff invented in the 70s and 80s. For example, capacitative touchscreens were developed in the late 1970s, and have just now seen wide use with the early smartphones and tablets.

I think there’s a certain amount of futuristic snobbiness that goes on; we look back at the 1954-1984 era when mundane things like central air conditioning, microwave ovens and transistor radios were being commercialized. To us, some 30-60 years later, they seem quaint and not that amazing. I suspect though, to people of the time, a Westinghouse transistor radio that ran off batteries and that could be put in a pocket (albeit a somewhat big one) was freaking amazing. I think as a culture, we’re a little bit like I was when I was 14-15, and my dad was telling me how he saved up for his Westinghouse radio (just like the one in the link, BTW), and I looked at him like he’d grown a forehead tentacle, because I couldn’t imagine paying anything for that junky old radio when I was 14- I wanted a Walkman.

22

This has been asked before, but what do people think are the new trends coming?

I recall back in the late 90s, I thought stereolighography (which is what 3D printing was called) was going to be big. Almost 20 years later and it is now just starting to break into the mainstream.

A big trend I will predict is the democratization of medicine. People will become much better at diagnosing and managing medical conditions on their own. Part of the motive will be financial, part because quality is higher.

Also computers that will augment our social lives far more than they currently do.

Also narrow AI which can give good advice about a wide range of situations and personal issues. Right now AI can only do extremely narrow tasks. AI that acts like a competent mentor will pick up in a decade or two.

23

I think nanomachinery will be huge. It’s one of those technologies, like computers, which seems as though it could act as a basis for a whole host of other things. Admittedly, the main things popping into mind right now are medical, but that could be because that’s where a lot of the focus for it is right now. If nothing else, imagine DNA nanomachinery used to deliver specific doses of high toxicity medicine which couldn’t be otherwise utilized, or stomach acid powered robots monitoring an ulcer and sending diagnostic information to your doctor (or smartphone?)

24

Virtual Reality is on the cusp of being introduced to the masses, after it piggy-backed on advances in ultra-sharp smartphone displays and sensors (gyro,accelerometer,etc.).

I can picture it, in conjugation with a currently non-existent global 10Gbps internet, allowing us to actually be more productive in daily tasks, replacing today’s horrid teleconferences and videoconferences, and also useful for education (Free VR university for everyone! No asking questions to the teacher, but you can use the forums!)

I suspect it’ll also help lead to helpful scientific insights, especially once the VR camera arrays are shrunk enough. The same way X-rays and tiny cameras do.

It should also provide impetus for all kinds of research into body sensors and feedback mechanisms for the body, destined to create a one:one body controller for VR. This will have likely have positive effects for artificial limbs and brain activity, among other fields.

Battery technology research is a hopeful field too. If we can double or triple current capacity (I know, it sounds crazy…) or make it a third of the price (much less crazy), it’ll be game over for civilian gasoline-powered land vehicles. (cool!)

If Solar panels keep dropping in price, the combination will also mean the end of most coal factories and utilities will only exist as backups, and to provide power to particularly hungry industrial customers (plants and the likes) who cannot make do with solar+batteries.

I don’t know about genetic therapy and deep learning AI.

I’ll know genetic therapy is poised to take-off when they can routinely and affordably implant lab-grown hair and “cure” baldness, since it’s a multi-$100B market with low risk.

I’ll know deep learning is on the cusp when it can translate between two unrelated languages as well as a professional human translator. (not holding my breath for this one…)

25

I’m of the view that “we haven’t seen nothin’ yet” in terms of the radical technological changes that are possible.

There are several fields that require a minimum technological level for them to blow up in spectacular ways.

One such field is the nanomachinery that Stately Geek mentioned. At some future date, it seems reasonable that we will be able to construct enormously complex sets of machinery, allowing nanomachinery to actually replicate the components to itself. The RepRap 3d printer current can replicate the plastic parts used in itself, and there are higher end additive metal 3d printers that can make the metal parts used in a rep-rap, but the critical sensors and electronics of a RepRap cannot be printed.

A 3d printer that works like this one would not be subject to this limitation.

So what? So you have a 3d printer that can copy itself. Big deal. The big deal is, if it copies itself, the cost plummets to basically just the cost of the raw materials. Ok. Well, what if these 3d printers were used to print robots to gather more raw materials? Now the cost of raw materials plummets. Now the limiting factor is energy. So print some solar panels or nuclear reactor parts, whichever makes engineering sense. Ok…

The amount of industrial growth possible with this could easily be a couple orders of magnitude. The limiting factor now would be human intelligence to create new blueprints for the nanomachinery to print.

Well, human brains are a complex nanoscale computer…

26

One thing to keep in mind is how much various technologies build off of each other. If you were to bring most modern electronic gadgets back in time with you, it would be virtually useless due to a lack of power supply and network to connect to. All of modern technology is based on a huge supply chain and set of fabrication processes that together are the culmination of the entirety of human progress. With knowledge flowing everywhere in the world instantaneously, there’s more ability to collaborate with others who have similar ideas and less time spent doing something the wrong way that others have tried before.

And there are still people starving all over the world because we still haven’t solved the fundamental problems of global resource management due to our primitive brains.

27

That’s less a matter of resource management than that of it is hard to keep people in control from starving those they see as their enemies. No technological fix is going to solve that problem.

28

How would VR improve the educational experience if you can’t ask questions (by which I assume you mean the lectures are recorded.) Few lectures or talks I’ve been to would have been improved by being able to see the lecturer from a different angle - which those in the classroom can’t do anyway.

I do lots of teleconferences, and face to face meetings with the same people - and I’m not sure VR would help. The big negative of a teleconference is when lots of people talk at once, and the inability to have side meetings. We would do that now with texting, I suppose.

ETA: VR will be great in entertainment though.

29

Well, first of all, we could reform how education works in the first place. People don’t learn much sitting there listening to a lecture for an hour. The optimal method for learning is something like this :

  1. Cover an overview of the subject and preview an actual problem that the student will be required to solve using the knowledge.
  2. Divide the information to be taught into the smallest subunits possible. “snippets” of knowledge, if you will. Teach each separate snippet. The easiest, computer driven way, would be to offer a text, video, and audio form for each snippet so the student can click the one that fits their learning style best - but don’t make them waste time on them all.
  3. Drill the student on the snippets with spaced repetition.
  4. Have the students apply the knowledge as a whole against problems with testable results. These would be computer generated tests/quizzes or real world exercises, depending upon the subject, where they have to apply the information on a real or simulated system.
  5. Teach as you test - the exams for record (grades) should be based on the same computer generated testing bank as #4, just using questions from a set the students weren’t exposed to directly ahead of time. (the “learning” set is a set of questions based upon the test for record questions, just

It should be possible for a student to make up a bad exam and make up for a certain amount of missed “attendance” and homework grades, instead of it being a system of permanent penalties.

The spaced repetition flashcard “deck” should be a file stored on the cloud that stays with the student from class to class (it should be shared between all classes). Realistically they should continue to drill on the deck for years or for the rest of their working life. The actual cards themselves should be linked to online datasets such that if a particular “snippet” of information is ever disproven, that student can be made to learn the new and correct information.

30

Excellent question. The improvement comes from the amount of visual material that can suddenly (appear to) surround you. It’s the equivalent of jumping from a laptop screen to 6 iMax theaters at once in terms of canvas. This will have thousands of uses we can’t think of today.

How could it not help? You would get Positional Audio and an experience that is closer to real in-person meetings. As times goes by we will get good at tracking all your movements: eyes, lip movements, muscles and skeleton and at some point, it will feel as if you’re really next to someone, granted, they’re wearing a digital costume, but you can see them under there. And that will change a lot of things, same as phones did.