Is technology advancement rate slowing down?

kuukkeli said:

I don't see technological advancement slowing down in the near future. It just doesn't have that big impact in the everyday life anymore so it's easier to miss the advancement as huge life changing innovations are further apart.

Click to expand...

I agree with that statement. I think it is hard to determine what exactly technological advancement is? Is invention of internal combustion a bigger leap than invention of air-bag or fuel direct injection?

I disagree with research being more expensive, at least not in relative meaning. Rise in GDP, bigger percentage of GDP devoted to research, new techniques of research, software and hardware, information technology,... I'd say opposite, research is getting cheaper (relatively) and faster (absolutely).

nivi said:

The reason it costs more to invent something is becuase we know more, and as we know more each person can master less, and thus we specialise in little areas. We have been able to sustain (and grow!) the amount of innovations becuase A.Bigger population B.More People in higher education. This in my opinion can not be sustianed forever and we will start to see how new truly revoltionary things (trains, internet, etc...) be few and far between.

Click to expand...

This is the post that best matches my opinion.

The only areas I can perceive that may accelerate are:

(i) genetic diagnosis and engineering as AI like tools will likely
assist with the complexity of analysis.

(ii) green technologies as resource depletion impacts

(iii) possibly in IT when the migration to parallel processing
has been mastered.


There are a number of areas where technological advance
seem to have slowed down.

(a) doubling the power of a micro-processor every n months;
where n is getting longer

(b) high energy physics due to escalating costs

(c) nuclear power due to concerns about safety

There is an awful lot of tidying up research to be done
and I expect much incremental and continuous improvements,
but i would be very pleasantly suprised if anything
really radical emerges in the rest of my (I'm 51 years old) life.

Compare 2006 with 1986, now 1986 with 1966, 1966 with 1946: looking comparatively I'd say our lives are changing more rapidly still so no it is not slowing down. The internet has given technology a boost. Doubling processor speeds would become redundant with quantum computing; Photons do not interact with each other, so the problem with chip size would become irrelevant.

Also fusion technology is looking for the first time in 50 years, actually quite promising. I'd say watch this space. Eventually it will slow down but I'm not convinced it has yet.

El_Machinae said:

I think that technology is not only a function of scientific discoveries, but more of a combining of things that we know into something useful. For technological advancement to continue, we merely need for people to combine discoveries in useful ways. I think that this can continue for (nearly) forever. You really don't even need new scientific knowledge for this to occur: you merely need a better penetration of current scientific knowledge into the population and let the creative spirit take place.

Click to expand...

Exactly my thoughs. Well said, El_macho Humanity advanced technologically before the "invention" of scientific thinking.

I'm rambling: but keep this in mind - the amount of scientific information is continuing to grow; and it will keep on growing at a rate somewhat correlated to the growth of our economies. Scientific information is currently growing at a fairly massive rate and is experiencing geometric growth. I think it will become linear eventually and grow at a function of our economic growth (with is also compounding)

Click to expand...

I guess that everybody who bothers to read my posts knows that I am very skeptical about predicting the future by using cuantitative computational models, maybe because I work with them. This question is also about predicting the future, so I would say that you cannot predict the future when so many non-linear variables are implied. My good feelings, though, is that we are still accelerating, or at least the number of papers published in scientific journals is growing higher and higher. Yesterday I looked for a recent paper in Journal of Biological Chemistry where I am cited (It is nice to read a paper where it says "Urederra et al. found this and that") and it took me a while to find the paper since each issue is about 800 pages long and the index is a bit weird with papers sorted in fields with no page correlation. The point is that they publish one issue every two weeks so every year there are 20000 pages of articles published in just that journal. If you look at the number of pages published by year and you'll notice that the number of pages grows year by year.

But, like El Macho said, science and technology are related but not the same. I am a bit worried about the quality of the science published nowadays which may have an impact on technology advancement. More papers to publish means more papers to review, and there is a lot of pressure among the scientific community to publish papers (publish or perish). Those two things, more pressure and less time for the reviewers to check for errors, are hurting the quality of the sience published nowadays. So when you have to publish and you don't have the time to, the first thing you start cutting working time is in reviewing others people articles. After all you don't get paid for that and the process is almost annonymous.

Sidhe said:

Compare 2006 with 1986, now 1986 with 1966, 1966 with 1946: looking comparatively I'd say our lives are changing more rapidly still so no it is not slowing down. The internet has given technology a boost. Doubling processor speeds would become redundant with quantum computing; Photons do not interact with each other, so the problem with chip size would become irrelevant.

Also fusion technology is looking for the first time in 50 years, actually quite promising. I'd say watch this space. Eventually it will slow down but I'm not convinced it has yet.

Click to expand...

Couldnt agree more. Every generation for a century has believed most of the important discoveries have been made and it just a case of joining up the dots and persuing a few long term targets. They were wrong a century ago and they are wrong now. It has been getting faster consistantly and I see no reason for this to change in the short term.

Winner said:

We're still in the period of very fast growth. But inevitably, since our resources are limited, we will reach the upper limit of resources we can allocate on science/technology. Computers can help us, but they cannot replace us (unless we develop a real AI, which is still very far).

Click to expand...

Yeah, but they can help us more and more

Winner said:

Imagine humanity as a company. Company, in order to do really big things, must expand. Microsoft went from a garage software firm to a huge trans-national company. Do you think it would have been able to develop Windows XP if it hadn't grown to this size?

Click to expand...

That's incorrect, you can do more with less! Today's rail construction firms can lay more track then the 19th century folk with less people. The same can be done in the tech industry

Winner said:

As of now, humanity is stil expanding - the economy still grows fast as well as the population, barriers are being removed and this fuels the advancement. In other words, we can still "grow" fast enough to put up with the increasing costs of the new technologies.

But this is not going to last forever. Technologies will still continue to get more "expensive", but human growth will slow down.

Click to expand...

Technology removes barriers that we never knew existed, there are plenty out there that we haven't even discovered yet.

Winner said:

I don't say that the progress will stop altogether, just that it will be much slower than we previously expected. In the 50's, scientist believed that by the end of the 20th century, we would have working commercial fusion reactors. We don't have them and the optimistic estimates say we will have them in 40-50 years.

Click to expand...

What people predict is always wrong, that's not because of your supposed tech slowdown but because people suck at making good predictions.

Winner said:

So, no FTL travel in next, say, 1000 years

Click to expand...

FTL is impossible anyways...

Right now technological advancement is definitely accelerating, but it is conceivable that it may slow down in the future. In the near future (next few decades), the most likely factors of a slowdown are:

1. energy depletion
2. environmental depletion
3. destruction by war

Definitely accelerating. Drop $10,000 on a top of the line computer with brand new parts that have just come out of R&D and see what that price tag will be in the next year. With instantaneous communication technological innovation can be achieved much faster, and the bigger costs you talk about are easily offset by our growing economy.

Perfection said:

FTL is impossible anyways...

Click to expand...

You should put a proviso with that, assuming Einstein is right.

It may be possible to circumvent the laws with gravitational effects, who knows, the discussion of FTL being impossible may one day seem naive, I'm not brave enough to know what will happen in the next 2 billion years.

If you could achieve light speed+ instantaneously, then there's no reason why it has to mean that time goes backwards or whatever, again we don't really know what happens when things travel faster than light, all we have is maths. A lot of fact is claimed from ignorance these days, and frankly I don't automatically buy theories without evidence.

I'm a believer but not a faithful devotee to any scientific laws atm. Too much speculation to be sure.

Technology removes barriers that we never knew existed, there are plenty out there that we haven't even discovered yet.

Click to expand...

Why not FTL?

Yes I assume that this basic repeatedly confirmed property of the universe is indeed true. That's not that big of assumption and isn't something you shouldn't whine about.

Sidhe said:

Why not FTL?

Click to expand...

You can't circumvent basic properties of the universe.

Perfection said:

Yes I assume that this basic repeatedly confirmed property of the universe is indeed true. That's not that big of assumption and isn't something you should whine about.

Click to expand...

Whine? I just take what we know now as not the be all and end all, like you do, your so sure of yourself, that you know ultimately how technology will develop, how nothing can be but what you see in an equation for ever.

It's not whining, it's having an open mind. Science doesn't progress because you accept everything you're taught? I find your attitude somewhat isolationist, I only believe that what I'm told is true, and that makes me an arbiter of the next 4 billion years of technological advancement, because I have all the answers, it's a bit arrogant, and a bit hidebound to assume everything you know is correct because science tells you so.

Science evolves because people question it's foundations, if your happy to accept it as being stagnant because Einstein says so, then your losing out IMO.

I'm glad theoreticians don't think like you do, or assume they know the future because of maths.

Perfection said:

You can't circumvent basic properties of the universe.

Click to expand...

They are fact then 100% proven? You know this? How?

What if you bend space in front of you so that the distance is shortened, you certainly circumvent it then, What if you can bend it so much you break it and form short cuts, what if Einstein was wrong? You say your an atheist? I don't agree your science is a religion.

Sidhe said:

If you could achieve light speed+ instantaneously, then there's no reason why it has to mean that time goes backwards or whatever, again we don't really know what happens when things travel faster than light, all we have is maths. A lot of fact is claimed from ignorance these days, and frankly I don't automatically buy theories without evidence.

Click to expand...

I don't understand the maths, but my understand was that FTL travel would mean time travel is possible.

Yes, "assuming Einstein is right", but relativity isn't a "theory without evidence".

Sidhe said:

Whine? I just take what we know now as not the be all and end all, like you do, your so sure of yourself, that you know ultimately how technology will develop, how nothing can be but what you see in an equation for ever.

Click to expand...

I don't say we know everything. I'm just saying that this one thing we do know (that C is the speed limit) is probably correct and so I use my knowledge.

Sidhe said:

It's not whining, it's having an open mind.

Click to expand...

Yes it is, you're threadjacking because I said something about science and you seem hell bent on denying the simple statement of scientific knowldge.

Sidhe said:

Science doesn't progress because you accept everything you're taught? I find your attitude somewhat isolationist, I only believe that what I'm told is true, and that makes me an arbiter of the next 4 billion years of technological advancement, because I have all the answers, it's a bit arrogant, and a bit hidebound to assume everything you know is correct because science tells you so.

Click to expand...

OH YES! YOU'VE FOUND MY ARROGANCE! I TRUST THAT THE CONSENSUS BUILT BY THOUSANDS OF PHYSICISTS OVER DECADES IS MOST LIKELY CORRECT!

Sidhe said:

Science evolves because people question it's foundations, if your happy to accept it as being stagnant because Einstein says so, then your losing out IMO.

Click to expand...

Not just Einstein everyone! It's a waste of my time to question things that a bajillion people have already questioned as an layman outside the field without a shred of reason to think this consensus is incorrect. You're asking me to be completely paranoid about everything which is counterproductive and stupid.

Sidhe said:

I'm glad theoreticians don't think like you do, or assume they know the future because of maths.

Click to expand...

I'm glad they don't think like you and question basic scientific consensus without a hint of merit.

Sidhe said:

They are fact then 100% proven? You know this? How?

Click to expand...

I don't know anything 100%, but 99.999% is good enough for me. Maybe not for you, but you shouldn't whine when I accept stuff like this.

Sidhe said:

What if you bend space in front of you so that the distance is shortened, you certainly circumvent it then, What if you can bend it so much you break it and form short cuts, what if Einstein was wrong? You say your an atheist? I don't agree your science is a religion.

Click to expand...

If Einstein was wrong (and by Einstein, I mean the general consensus of the scientific community, not some dead physicist), then cool, I can vacation on Alpha Centauri! I don't feel the need to stick in things like "assuming current scientific consensus is correct" into every one of my statements about science because someday that might change.

mdwh said:

I don't understand the maths, but my understand was that FTL travel would mean time travel is possible.

Yes, "assuming Einstein is right", but relativity isn't a "theory without evidence".

Click to expand...

Saying that FTL travel is impossible is though. The maths is basic no object with mass can achieve light speed, unless it is instantaneous. There is no evidence that we can't do it only maths per se. Thus it's not confirmed by actual experiment. I tend to agree it seems impossible. But think of it like this, does science know everything? Does it have all the answers, are there therefore not ways we can circumvent science that we haven't yet thought about, would it not be arrogant to assume there are? All I'm saying is that you can't base future development or the technology of 4 billion AD on what we know about the universe now, that is arrogant. We could be wrong. We usually are.

Perfection you are arrogant, you assume much about the universe from a platform of a God who sees the whole of reality and knows it, that always and ever science will be true, that a theory is gospel.

99.99999% my arse we aren't even close to that, God your such a believer, but sadly it's faith, we are always right, I cannot question science, it must be true and always will be, physics has all the answers, the experiments we do now do not suffer from our ignorance, there are no aunanswered questions. Come on, stop philosophising about the future in 4 billion years time. You have no idea how much ignorance we have, saying now that this is our limitation is fine, I agree, but making claims that it will always be so is basically arrogance.

Let me ask you this perfection, are all laws uniform in all parts of the universe? Or is there a general assumption being made about what we can see through a telescope; then answer me this, is what we see and have experimented on absolute, do scientists put down there pens and paper once the evidence is in? You do, thankfully everyone else is asking questions. It all just seems simple to you it's all black and white. If only...

Questioning science is meritable, accepting absolutely is ignorant.

You have all the answers, and yet you claim that I have none? Fact is you don't really have the answers and neither does science, but you'll claim you do anyway, Praise the Lord!!! Physics is dead, Perfection knows all about now and the future, halelujah.

Consider human transport:

19th century

Steam Engine
Bicycle
Internal Combustion Car

20th Century

Powered Air Plane
Oil Powered Ships
Submarine
Electric Train
Jet Plane
Hydrogen Peroxide Submarines
Helicopter
Turbine Ships
Nuclear Submarine
Space Rocket
Hovercraft
High Speed Trains
Space Shuttle

on the face of it, the 20c century has been more productive than the 19th,
but look again when did those innovations occur?

The last was launched in 1981.

Although there has been a bit of development on these,
French recently broke world record for high speed train,
there has been Nothing New in the 26 years since then!!

EdwardTking said:

Consider human transport:

Click to expand...

In the 21st century, I'm commuting to work via internet.

El_Machinae said:

In the 21st century, I'm commuting to work via internet.

Click to expand...

An apt point, but hardly human transport.

And I could argue that the internet is just a logical development of the 19th telegraph.

Comms technology has done much better than human transport;
and there are likely still a few technologies to be developed there;
e.g. rotating polarity light communication (as opposed to amplitude
or frequency modulated communications).

The most promising area is likely around genetic engineering in life sciences.

Consider humanity's traditional track.


Early Life

(1) We can eat it.

(2) We can travel on it, wear it, hide in it.


Pre-History

(3) We can cook it.

(4) We can extract materials to make things clothes from it.

(5) We can plant it.

(6) We can fertilise, irrigate and protect it.

(7) We can domesticate it.

(8) By replanting or breeding what I like best, we can develope it
into a greatly improverd variety (applying selective pressure to randm mutations).


More Recently

(9) I can nuke it or otherwise increase the mutation rate.

(10) We can add or remove genes.

Hopefully the Future

(11.) We can design genes.

(12.) We can design and build an organism.

e.g. a tree with improved photo-synthesis that
secretes alcohols that can substitute for fossil oil.

havent heard of much advancements so far...