The manifestation of Material Objects into the World started yielding diminishing returns a long time ago. The Technology of 1916 was qualitatively and quantitatively superior to that of 1816, but the Technology of 2016 is basically identical to that of 1916.
It's over.
Essentially, you are right. I had read an article about this some time ago:
aeon.co
From an academic point of view, personally, I see the current way of rewarding academics as one of the causes. Instead of letting people go about their own research in peace, they are being pushed to shit out as many insignificant publications as possible.
From a more general, social point of view distractions play a vital role in making people less able to just focus on their own ideas and develop them.
There is also the shift that happened in the 80's that pushed researchers into the free market, forcing the most intelligent in our society to make trinkets that can be sold quickly. Instead of working, at Bell Labs, where they would have virtually unlimited funding (from the telephone monopoly in this case) and coming up with the transistor, they work work for Apple, and make Idiot-Phone 7, an XBOX or other pointless crap. Actually, breaking up the Bell telephone monopoly is one of the reasons for this...
I like your camelback locomotive OP. Because I deal with thermodynamics, I raise you a more scientifically designed machine.
We are probably seeing the early signs of the knowledge event horizon. The more that is known the more you need to learn in order to gain new knowledge. In other words nearly all the low hanging fruits have been picked.
100 years ago Nobel prize winner like Einstein were in their 20's. Today they are in their 70's.
How are you reading this text OP?
he probably can't since he's a stupid dumb bitch
>There is also the shift that happened in the 80's that pushed researchers into the free market, forcing the most intelligent in our society to make trinkets that can be sold quickly. Instead of working, at Bell Labs, where they would have virtually unlimited funding (from the telephone monopoly in this case) and coming up with the transistor, they work work for Apple, and make Idiot-Phone 7, an XBOX or other pointless crap.
this, it's pathetic that we are pissing away tons of PhDs in mathematics and physics working at Silicon Valley "tech" companies that are mostly just producing new ways to send stupid pictures to each other, data mine the user, and sell said data to advertisers.
maybe if we raised people to care about more than money it wouldn't be such an issue
lots of people working on wall street or in silicon valley only do so because they cannot find a job doing actual science, even people from top tier institutions. Maybe the State could open more national labs or something, I don't know. there are too few opportunities with job security for young scientists that are actually productive, I think.
Are we back in 1899?
Seriously now. Life in 2016 is much more different from life in 1916 than 1916 from 1816.
>1916
The Army still used charts and donkeys to carry their artillery, most people walked to their job, horses and carriages were still a common sight in the streets of London. For 1816: check, check, check.
>2016
Pretty much everyone has a car. Computers, phones, TVs, the internet. Air Conditioning.
Etc.
It seems only computer technology is improving.
Cars, planes, plastics, pharma...
Spend less time at the computer
It has not. There is another revolution coming very soon. We can see it on the horizon.
Mayabe _this one_ will be the last one. We can't see any more revolutions on the horizon after this one, after all.
We already have all of that. What are you trying to say?
have you forgot about gene technology and the 'transhuman revolution'? They are coming, fast...
>100 years ago Nobel prize winner like Einstein were in their 20's. Today they are in their 70's.
No, their 30's. The only exceptions are Bragg (because he did his discovery with his father) and Malala (because is a peace nobel prize) nobelprize.org
I am trying to say that none of those existed in 1916.
You made the mistake of thinking you are not talking to the impatient generation. 1916 was like so yesterday
>the Technology of 2016 is basically identical to that of 1916.
Behold: The silliest sentence I've read this entire week.
Unless you mean to suggest that modern cars are not "qualitatively and quantitatively superior" to the Model T, that modern aircraft are not meaningfully better than propeller-driven triplanes, that modern medicine is pretty much pre-penicillin practice with some spit and polish, that modern materials science has derived no significant improvements on Bakelite, that modern computers are basically equivalent to ... what, exactly?
You underestimate the impact of telegraphs and railroads.
The shit we make now is basically just better versions of those two technologies, it's not really revelutionary.
I still think OP is exaggerating, but he has a point, too. The rate of meaningful technological progress is slowing down.
>I still think OP is exaggerating
I think OP is retarded or a retarded troll
I mean... he definitely is.
I mean, it is true that we've probably run out of new fundamental physical phenomena to exploit; there will never be a new phenomenon as versatile and useful as electricity (for instance) to discover and harness. We probably will never see the kind of massive, fundamental advancements that occurred between 1816 and 1916 again.
But then again, there's enormous potential improvements in terms of *practical* effects on our lives hidden in the consequences of the existing laws of physics. We haven't nearly run out of technology, or even undiscovered physical phenomena; I think we can expect condensed matter physics, materials science, and the general area of chemistry/molecular biology/nanotechnology to be as fruitful and productive in the coming century as fundamental physics was in the last.
Also, I believe as Moore's Law winds down, we're going to see some of the incredible technological effort our society has been pushing into eking out year-after-year doublings in semiconductor technology to start to refocus on other fields again. I think that monumental project kind of sucked up a lot of our society's collective technical capacity. (But there's still many possible routes to more powerful computers, too, they're just radical or speculative enough they can't be relied upon to deliver a doubling within a horizon of two processor generations.)
When I talk to normies, they all think there have been no scientific advancements since 1900.
gtfo and start reading books
I would actually expect most normies not to understand the scope of the industrial revolution and be more focused on smaller, more recent advances.
>This thread again
>but the Technology of 2016 is basically identical to that of 1916.
You exaggerate but I agree with the idea.
The best example is the Man on the Moon: We are able to put a Man on the Moon in 1969 with a primitive technology and since NOTHING.
as someone who's seen 3-4 racebait threads a day just a couple of months ago, i view this as a progress
You would think. What you don't realize about normies is that FarmVille has made them so impatient that they literally believe the brand new iPhone they purchased yesterday is antiquated technology.
>WHY DOES NOTHING NEW HAPPEN LIKE EVER
>We are able to put a Man on the Moon in 1969 with a primitive technology and since NOTHING
But we're not able to put a man on the moon in 2016, and in 1969 we were only able to do it because they had infinite money; even in 1969 it was not practical to send a man to the moon, and something isn't really technologically relevant until it's practical to do it. Computers could have been built, technically, with unlimited funds, in the mid-1800s with Babbage's plans for the Analytical Engine; but it wasn't practical to do so until the mid-1900s and if the Engine had been built as a 19th-century 'moonshot' it would have had as little effect on our lives as Apollo
>Tila Tequila believes the Earth is flat
Scalar quantity is one which has magnitude only and which can be completely described by a number with the necessary unit. Quantities such as length, area, volume, time and mass are scalars. For example, 3 metres completely describes a scalar quantity of length, 5 minutes completely describes a scalar quantity of time, and 4 cubic centimetres completely describes a scalar quantity of volume.
Racebait's are fine IMHO, but the whole the Tech Advancement Ending Theory is absolute bullshit for so many different reasons.
>Scientific Fields will be split into more Fields
>We as a species are living longer/on the verge of Imortality
>AI's
>Downloadable Knowledge reminiscent of THe Matrix.
Jesus fuck these threads are brainlet mode activate.
^ ^
Go back to Facebook, Tila
I didn't say we didn't do it; I said we did it, and it was basically a pointless stunt to show off our national rocketry penis. We had the technology to land a man on the Moon in 1969, but only if you were willing to spend billions of dollars per person for basically no actual return.
Lots of things are *possible* with arbitrary funds long before they become economically feasible; but it's only once they become practical and economically feasible that they actually matter.
>planes
You kidding me nigga? Sure, op is being overly dramatic and 1916 in his post does not hold up, but look at our planes. It's the same fucking planes as in the 70's. Our planes have not progressed (in a paradigm shifting way) for FORTY FUCKING YEARS. Pic somewhat related.
He is wrong setting the date at 1916, but you cannot possibly say that the model T is anyhow different in principle to a modern car. A horse is, a buggy is, even a Stanley-steamer is different, but certainly not the model T. Remember - we are not talking about detail differences here.
Get the US in war with China and awe yourself at the scientific boom. I'm not joking, and it wasn't a pun.
Was going to make this thread in regards to the stagnation of physics. Reading phys.org and arxiv is depressing. I don't think dark matter/energy will be much of anything.
It is time to manifest memes into the real world.
The coming age will be most likely the age of practical engineering (prosthetics, solar cells, thermoelectrics etc). But it might also be the age of unmasking the brain, understanding consciousness and human manipulation, and stuff like data science, AI etc.
Most likely jack will happen, and China takes over.
It is time to manifest memes into the real world.
The coming age will be likely the age of practical engineering (prosthetics, solar cells, thermoelectrics etc). But it might also be the age of unmasking the brain, understanding consciousness and human manipulation, and stuff like data science, AI etc.
Most likely jack will happen, and China takes over.
Boeing made a plane that is almost all composites. It's light AF
This is the filter to enter a Kardashev scale type 1 civilisation.
In 1916, we couldn't even cross the atlantic, while today you can fly anywhere in the world, and a lot faster. Further improvements in plane speed are not really commercially viable because of thermodynamics. We have commercial maglev trains today that travel at speeds above 200 km/h on average, although they aren't that widely used. Also, if Elon Musk's memeloop proves successful, it will be a huge improvement over trains (inb4 that thunderf00t video). Cars aren't that much better, because the factor limiting the top speed of cars is human reaction time, however we will very likely see commercial self driving cars in the near future. We have been to the Moon since 1916, and both NASA and private companies want to go to Mars in the next few decades. We have smartphones and the internet, you can send messages to anyone anywhere almost instantly. We have so many atomic bombs that we could erase a significant percentage of people, while fission wasn't even a known thing in 1916. Fusion may actually become a thing in the coming decades. Medical science has improved a fuckton since 1916, and CRISPR may become a huge thing in the near future.
Thats entirely due to advances in materials, not aerospace. Today all of the aerospace research is focused on low-aspect ratio wings and micro-air vehicles. aka something that won't affect us much.
There will be no more Prandtls or Karmans in our lifetime
That sounds very sad but I'm sure there will be. They will just be working on other stuff that today will not seem as important.
I say we accept it and reapply what we have to address more abstract issues to help everyone. As we really have more then we know what to do with already.
If you are dead set on continuing this madness well there are a few different ways you can go further
1. more energy (i.e. get fusion reactors working or something)
2. better materials (i.e advancements in micro structures promise to be as big as the heat treatment revolution)
3. ideas/application (i.e. we have the tech but some new way of using it has huge impact. something like Computer + Car = Self driving car)
4. bigger teams with more backing (now that systems are too complex for a single person, bigger development teams offer options the garage inventor could not do)
Problem is all of these are showing demising returns in my opinion. And many current systems are unsustainable given how we make and use them. So some of #3 is all I think we really need to realign things for the better.
A bigger part that gets ignored is economics.
As it stands we are having trouble affording what we have. Like if we didn't buy new phones every two years the manufacturing economy of scale would drop, prices would skyrocket and the whole cell phone market would shrink to the point it may just die. Same goes for lots of our newer stuff. Larger global markets and high speed monetary motion is required just to build some of this stuff.
And it has huge complications due to the added complexities. De-lamination is a big concern that could ground them in a decade costing everyone a fortune, something Boeing doesn't want to talk about much.
>look we can save $$$ if we use lighter materials in our aircrafts.
>but it will cost $$$$$$$ to manufacturer and maintenance
>Just build it anyway and get someone else to pay for it later (just like most of what we do now)
Planes are currently made of fucking aluminum. Aluminum has no fatigue limit, which means any repetitive stress kills it. This means aircraft must be X-rayed periodically to check for cracks.
Sometimes airlines skimp on this and part of the fuselage falls off in flight.
Second it's ok if it only last 10 years because it's so much lighter, it's a lot cheaper in terms of fuel so it will have paid itself off.
Fuel is a HUGE cost in the airline industry that completely eats maintenance costs.
You have no idea the energy costs of these high performance composites do you? Truth is not many do.
Let me tell you it is HUGE, so big that in a strict energy sense it is massivly cheaper to use aluminum. And aluminum is already has a mind boggling energy demand to it. In fact aluminum is so high that some companies actually have two manufacturing plants and will literally switch between which one they use just to take advantage of the lower energy cost based on the local market pricing.
The reason why they do it is becuse they don't pay those energy cost directly. There are subzindes and coutless other maket factors that allow them to make money doing things that should really cost far more for the end user.