Minimally-invasive (or non-invasive) surgery. Especially brain surgery. Also, coronary bypasses and joint replacements. When they can do non-invasive joint replacements, I’ll be impressed.
Actually . . . assuming open-ended technological progress, ALL technology is in a “primitive” state.
Stem cells and artificial organ and tissue grafts.
I wonder if, in my kids’ lifetimes, it will seem weird (and maybe quaint or even gross) that we used to get dead peoples’ hearts or corneas (or live donors’ kidneys or lungs) put into our bodies.
:dubious: Seems pretty unlikely to me.
I’d propose nuclear pulse propulsion, but most peoples’ definition of “better” excludes detonating lots of fission warheads. Even if safely behind a big-ass metal pusher plate and the world’s biggest shock absorbers.
[Quote=Niven/Pournelle, Footfall]
God was knocking, and he wanted in bad.
[/quote]
But yeah. Extra-planetary space propulsion is pretty primitive.
Thats all it takes to win though, tech just has to be better than the alternative.
Are you saying that there has been AI for 50 years - or just that computers surpass humans in certain areas for 50 years? (Longer than that, given Samuels’ checker playing program.)
A lot of things AI researchers were working on 45 years ago when I took it exist today - but we are no closer to AI. Just lots of great heuristics and applications.
Medical imaging also. Seeing how mri and CT scans have only been popular for a few decades I’d day we are. Just starting with the field.
3d, affordable, color contrasted, ultra high resolution, etc scans will come out someday making our scans seem primitive.
Cell phones (as something distinct from computers).
“Wait… you mean people had to have these plus separate computers if they wanted to compile code and edit videos and apply filters to images in Photoshop and stuff? So, like, if you were working at your computer you couldn’t just make a call? Or if you took a snap of the property site with your phone, you couldn’t just print it when you got back to the office, you’d have to transfer it to the computer first?”
Out of everything that’s been listed so far, this is the one which offers at least a reasonable beacon of hope. Neuralstem, Inc. is working on some stuff that may blow depression right out of the water. I have confidence that something big is right around the corner—we may even see something by the end of this decade. A lot people (including myself) have high hopes for NSI-189, and that’s not the only thing they have up their sleeves.
I would say rather the opposite. MRI and CT are both running pretty close to the theoretical limits of signal to noise. Both were enabled by the advent of affordable compute power. The CRT by the filtered back projection algorithms, and MRI by affordable 2D FFT. After that, further advances in compute got more interesting algorithms, but progress here is slowing. We already have 3D from both CT (helical scanners) and MRI, resolution is limited by the physics of the system, and colour is something that is mostly avoided due to the habit of colour actually hiding detail rather than enhancing it. Similar progress has been made with ultrasound, but it always seems the poor cousin, despite its value.
There are some interesting fringe imaging ideas around, TeraHertz and correlation of scattered light methods come to mind. Scattered light methods might be enabled with the advent of essentially infinite compute power. But you wont be able to fight Shannon, no matter what you do.
It is perhaps worthwhile looking at the opposite. What technologies would appear to have reached some level of maturity, and show no signs of a sudden breakthrough leading to another surge in capability?
There not a lot that come to mind, and these seems to ones that are constrained by some underpinning physics of the task. Things like signal to noise, or really nasty scaling laws.
For example, Photography is, despite what a lot of people think, probably not going too much further. There are scant advances in optics, and the sensors are a very solid fraction of the theoretical maximum efficiency. Cameras are getting smarter about letting total fools take acceptable pictures, but for a person that has any clue, they are not taking pictures that are any better than were taken with film cameras 50 years ago. There is no new physics that is allowing much progress beyond the current signal to noise possible.
Aviation is another. Jumbo jets look the same as they did 50 years ago. The efficiency envelope of a jet is brutally constrained, and even if we developed new miracle materials, jets would only get their take-off weight down about 30% - the rest being fuel and payload - which no amount of miracle materials can help.
It is those areas where we don’t even understand the limits to our possible capability that are likely to show miraculous progress. And I agree with the above - medicine has got to be a huge one. The sheer complexity of biological processes are such that we are still only fiddling about around the edges. Most of our drugs are found, not designed, and we still don’t even understand the 3D shapes of many of the fundamental molecules that operate us. Given it is the 3D electron density of these molecules that determines their action, we basically still don’t understand entire slabs about how we work, let alone having any clue about how to go about fixing it.
Psychological disease really does have to be one of the worst. Depression, schizophrenia, we really have zero clue, yet finding real, rather than palliative treatment, ones based upon actual mechanistic understanding, would revolutionise the area beyond recognition.
Not AI, but voice interface computing. Siri and her ilk will have kids rolling their eyes in a few years, asking “Dad, why’s your phone so stupid?”
Wireless internet coverage. We aren’t near that flip-a-switch/turn-a-tap ubiquity that will have millenials sounding like folks now when they talk about pumping water or having only one tv.
Residential solar power. Better material integrated into the shingles will be developed. Giant black panels on rooftops will look as antiquated as servant’s quarters do today.
The thing about this question is that technological progress advances at an exponential rate. So in one sense all technology is in a primitive state. And to say we’ve reached the limit of some technologies is being presumptive because what happens is that there is often a paradigm shift in those technologies. It would have been easy to say once that computing had got to its limit.
Due to the exponential curve computing now is both incredibly advanced and incredibly primitive. We’re on an upwards curve and you can apply it to all technological progress.
“Wait…there were people who wrote code?”
I think it is drawing a long bow to assert that technology progresses at an exponential rate. Some technologies have spurts in growth, and many only plod along. Many are moribund.
Computer power is the key enabler for many advances in technologies, and this advancement has been build on one thing - that fact that we haven’t yet reached the limits of putting transistors on a wafer of silicon. Moore’s Law isn’t dead yet, but it is looking awfully unwell. 10nm processes have been delayed twice, and are now a full generation late. 7nm is possible, but looking very very hard. Neither will be arriving at the old Moore’s Law schedule. There are breathless announcements of new technologies that might keep the pace going a while longer, but it will almost certainly top out sometime.
The advent of sufficient cheap compute has enabled spurts in a whole range of science and technology, and will continue to do so. But the history of technology in the last 50 years is IMHO somewhat skewed by the success of microelectronics.
Heck, there is nothing technological here. This is just accidents of history and dopiness. My usual report is that if someone had said to me in 1990 that in 2015 I would not be able to control my house as a matter course from a mobile compute device I would have called them nuts. Even in 2005. It is all about walled gardens, land grabs of technology patents, and deliberate lack of interoperability. The TRON operating system was started in 1984, and was specifically intended to address these issues. It wasn’t a lack of foresight or technology that leaves us so bereft. You can blame a whole cardré of miscreants who deliberately sabotaged progress for local gain. It is still going on.
I’ve thought of this as well and recall Heinlein’s 3 stages of technology.
“…first a crudely simple and quite unsatisfactory gadget; second, an enormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcome the short comings of the original and achieving thereby somewhat satisfactory performance through extremely complex compromise; third, a final proper design therefrom.”
Cars and large vehicles in general have an even number of wheels and a steering wheel, it’s just the layout that works. Passenger and freight aircraft are generally cylinders with airfoils on the sides, it’s the most efficient layout in terms of energy use and space.
I think building construction technology could evolve significantly and this may be happening in China and the Middle East. There are interesting efforts in 3-D printing with concrete and there are several forms of fiber reinforcement (including steel mini-rebar) that replace hand fitted rebar.
Medicine is tough. I agree that we really don’t understand disease at the molecular level and that has huge potential. The good news is that the FDA doesn’t understand either and may let progress be pursued. However, when I worked with endoscopic instruments virtually every device was submitted as an “improvement” - no new ideas allowed - unless we wanted to go to Brazil with fewer controls or Canada with total control including limited liability. There are lots of great surgical and artificial organ ideas out there but the US is absolutely the most suppressive of new “mechanical” based technologies. Some basic problems are the variability of tissue, the desire for minimally invasive techniques, and the expectation that new techniques will always work. There’s always room for clever device design but some surgical instruments are near limits of current material properties.
Hammer heads unearthed from Roman Empire ruins are all but identical to ones we use today. Perhaps in 2,000 more years we’ll look back and say “What the hell was this used for?”
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Two things that are out there now, but may be about to be everywhere…
inductive charging - it’s a great solution for my toothbrush. Some cell phones and tablets have it. I’m waiting for the day that it’s common to have charge areas on countertops, and I can just drop my phone next to me at the office.
Home automation - I worked in the field for a bit last year. I want to install a system at the house. But I just can’t bring myself to do it, because I feel like it’s not quite there. Too many different incompatible infrastructures.