Is technology advancement rate slowing down?

[Winner]

It's an interesting question. In the 20th century, humanity experienced a rapid boom of technology. Within mere 100 years, we've moved from steam engines to nuclear fusion, from cavalry to main battle tanks, from balloons to space travel.

But is this trend going to last?

Some scientist believe, that the advancement rate will simply begin to slow down because of increasing costs of developing new technology. You sure know what I mean, it is much easier to invent the wheel than to build a train. And it is much easier to build a steam engine than to build a nuclear power plant. For today's projects, you need huge sums of money, large teams of scientists and engineers, intense international cooperation and a lot of time. This is in sharp contrast with the 20th century inventors, who worked alone or with just a few people. You simply can't invent a cure for cancer in your kitchen.

Also, in the past, humanity has experienced a rapid growth of population and economy, which has enabled it to invest large sums of money into science. But as it appears, the more advanced the society is, the slower is the growth of its population and economy. Resources (including the natural ones) are limited.

So, what do you think? Will the rapid technology advancement rate continue in the next centuries? Or is it going to slow down, as humanity reaches the upper limits of its expansion on this planet?

 

[Rossiya]

No, in my opinion, it's getting faster and faster.

 

[GinandTonic]

It is still accelerating. The information revoloution means the increase in humanities technological base is diffused almost instantly. The nation-stte as a barrier to technological uptake is decreasing. Vastly higher numbers are educated than before.

When will it stop? When we hit the singularity, a brick wall or go bust. Personally I believe in the singularity.

 

[Winner]

No, in my opinion, it's getting faster and faster.

It was. It is, perhaps. But is it going to be so fast in the future too? With limited resources and increasing costs of new technologies?

 

[Eli]

Another factor in the potential slowing down of technological progress is that we might be approaching a full utilization of the part of the population that is able to contribute to new research and development.

If, very generally speaking, only a certain percent of the population is intelligent enough to pursue technological development, then the percent of the people in this group that actually do so constantly rises. We might hit a ceiling, although I believe we are still very far from it.

On the other hand, we develop not only technologies that are used to improve our lives, but technologies that contribute to our ability to develop other technologies. Today, computing and the Internet tremendously boost technological progress. Tomorrow, the appearance of a first, basic AI might help even more.

 

[Perfection]

New technologies may have increased costs, but we are much wealthier and can afford them. The train was designed by drafting, the spaceship by CAD, we have new tools to help manage the complexity. I see no reason to believe that such technology development enhancing devices won't completely compensate these problems enabling accelerating growth into the foreseeable future.

 

[Winner]

New technologies may have increased costs, but we are much wealthier and can afford them. The train was designed by drafting, the spaceship by CAD, we have new tools to help manage the complexity. I see no reason to believe that such technology development enhancing devices won't completely compensate these problems enabling accelerating growth into the foreseeable future.

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).

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?

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.

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.

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

 

[kuukkeli]

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.

 

[Kozmos]

The advent of certain technologies will solve the needs of recourses and materials.

 

[sysyphus]

I agree with Winner. I think it is inevitable that technology will slow down as we come closer to the limits of physical reality (e.g. the second law of thermodynamics). Each step will become more and more difficult to make, regardless of the tools and resources available.

Also, there are social issues. Human beings are becoming more and more weary of new technologies and trying to keep up with them. Used to be people got a new computer every year or two, now I know many people who haven't bought or upgraded in teh last four, they just don't have much use for a new one.

If one could quantify technological development, we would see that we are on an exponential curve (the infamous 'J' curve), whcih is the same a human population growth. I believe that technological advancement will soon evolve into an 'S' curve, as seen in the population growth of developed countries.

 

[kuukkeli]

I think it is inevitable that technology will slow down as we come closer to the limits of physical reality

Then surely, but we're not exactly close to that yet.

Also, there are social issues. Human beings are becoming more and more weary of new technologies and trying to keep up with them. Used to be people got a new computer every year or two, now I know many people who haven't bought or upgraded in teh last four, they just don't have much use for a new one.

There has always been people who are wary of new technology so I don't see that as a modern trend. I think it's basically the same phenomenon that causes us always to think that things were so much better when we were young (good 'ol days syndrome I might call it). And IMO those people you know have chosen quite bad time to not upgrade their computers as the evolution of computers has sped up a lot during the last few years.

 

[SG-17]

As long as we are still at war with each other, it will speed up, the need for newer battlefield tech will in turn generate domestic tech.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

So, what do you think? Will the rapid technology advancement rate continue in the next centuries? Or is it going to slow down, as humanity reaches the upper limits of its expansion on this planet?

Based on research by futurists like Ray Kurzweil and others, technological pace isn't slowing down, it's accelerating! It's based on the notion that the more discoveries are made and the more technology is invented, the faster the advance, so that growth isn't linear, but exponential. He's one of many who suspect that this will bring about a technological singularity within the next century, allowing intelligent machines who will themselves build increasingly intelligent machines.

 

[scy12]

I believe there is a general idea that today's technology is already very , very advanced and so many scientists and engineers work to adapt this technology rather than discovering new ones. .Still i don't think there is no technological advancement. Because of today's industrialized , information society if it ever becomes a need (war , etc) of today's society can accelerate technological advancement it can do it better than ever before.

 

[FriendlyFire]

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

No.
As we enter advances inboth genetics and medicine our life expectancies will recieve a major jump. We are close to break throughs in increasing human life about +50% though some showing promising increses as much as +200%.

Imagine the human campasity for research if one lives that long ?

 

[El_Machinae]

There are a few questions being asked here:
- will our economies continue to expand and grow?
- is the cost of discovering new information going up, is there a hard limit?
- what is technology?

Science is, in many ways, getting more and more expensive. A person needs to spend more of his life learning previous knowledge in order to discover something new. We see a parallel in our philosophical discussions here: I'm quite sure that very little unique is added to the global sum of our philosophical discussions. We have people 'discovering' philosophies that were written by Kant decades ago. To add to the discussion, we need to know all the groundwork that's been done.
- keep in mind, though, that it takes MUCH less time to learn new information/science that it did to discover it.

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.

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)

As well, though, the penetration of this information into the populace is continuing to expand (though in some places, like Western nations, we're seeing a slow-down; people aren't bothering to learn new thing as much as they could). And the availability of accessing this information is skyrocketing. It used to be that I could only attend seminars at my local campuses and hospitals (unless I wanted to travel). If I was lucky, I could get recordings or summaries of seminars done elsewhere. Nowadays, though, I have ample access to video-recordings of seminars to watch at my leisure: and it's not just me, many people can access these seminars. (even a few years ago, I was reading the speeches of lecturers that they posted online; nowadays, I'm watching them)

Remember, technological development happens whenever someone combines a discovery with another (older) innovation. This is something almost anyone can do. And the likelyhood of an invention happening increases with people's education. And there are billions of possible combinations possible, even without adding a few score new discoveries each month.

 

[El_Machinae]

It also feels like advancement is slowing down because we spend so much of our money on things that didn't require technological advancements to produce. Track your spending for a week, and think about how much 'innovation' there was in the last decade to deliver that product to you. As a consumer, we have a huge power to encourage technological development with our consumer dollars. (And as workers, we can very much continue the trend of economic growth).

 

[BCLG100]

No i dont think its slowing down at all, we experienced a slow down in technological discovery between about 1910-1965/70ish when we were merely fully discovering and finding out how to use the majority of things discovered in the late ninetenth century. Now were full on getting faster and faster.

 

[nivi]

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.

 

[SG-17]

No.
As we enter advances inboth genetics and medicine our life expectancies will recieve a major jump. We are close to break throughs in increasing human life about +50% though some showing promising increses as much as +200%.

Imagine the human campasity for research if one lives that long ?

For only those that can afford it, or import people like scientist, politicials, and several posters at CFC

But if it were available to everyone it would cause massive overpopulation.