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As soon as more is done with it than playing in the lab. As I heard in my first job...sometimes you have to shoot the engineers and go into production.
It's been said that the amount of technology captured and held classified by the U.S. Govt. averages 60 years advanced from all technology published at any given time.
A friend of mine who was a Ranger in WWII told me he used fax machines in the field during WWII.
So, look back 60 years from today, compare the difference, and then TRY to project 60 years forward from today. That would be where we are secretly at today.
With increasing techniocal advances it gets harder to make discoveries like fire. But just one examle is the advances in teh automobile;they are way advanced compared to just twenty years ago.Same goes for computers;the modern computer is better than the one NASA used at a fraction of the price. Surgery is far advanced as is medcine.Years ago they cut youy open and sewed you backup to die with many cancers.Cellphone and their capabilites wouldn';t even be believed. Communications is so fast many have a hard time advancing with it.Precision automation is unbelieveable now.The advancemnt in safety often mean the difference beween people dying from exposure to substances that killed mutiple thousands in industry.Look at just waht can be done for people witrh no leg()s ;arms or other handly caps;unbeliveable.Heart se urgery is now a standard surgery with much less risk and many times they can use stints that is otupatient surgery.
With increasing techniocal advances it gets harder to make discoveries like fire. But just one examle is the advances in teh automobile;they are way advanced compared to just twenty years ago.
I'd really tend to disagree with you here. Todays autos are more refined, with more safety features and lower levels of pollution. But really, the final form of the auto (fully enclosed, metal body (as opposed to wood/fabric), multicylinder engine) came about in the 1930's. Mass production and making them affordable for the masses was far before that. Maybe you could argue for the automatic transmission, I don't recall when it first went into production. For the most part the last 70 years of the auto industry has been gradual evolution rather than major new development. Even computers, there was real genius in their creation in the 50's and 60's, and in getting them to desk top size and priced for consumers in the '70's. Since then they have certainly gotten better, cheaper and faster, but again, more as an evolutionary development rather than some truely new product.
I don't deny anything you have said with respect to medicine. Many things that were death sentences even 20 years ago are routinely treated and survived now. Now if only we can get the costs back down to where they are affordable... I'm optimistic that the costs of diagnostic tools and treatments will come down.
Don't even get me started with cars! Very soon after the first Model T's were rolling off the production lines people were racing them on Salt Flats at speeds of 100 miles an hour or more. Most freeways are designed so that an 80th percentile driver will feel comfortable at speeds of 80 mph. The speed limit in my state is till 55 mph on most roads. There are still many, many cars on the road here that are not equipped with anti-lock brakes or airbags or crumple zones. Cars like that are completely out of reach for 50% of residents of this area. Similar to medicine. Sloan-Kettering can do amazing things for someone with a cancer diagnosis but it is still mostly luck, good genes and money. Pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars on palliatives with dubious and hard to quantify success. I am not even impressed with what has been done with computers to date. Manufacturers roll out a motherboard and CPU capable of 3Gh in 2002 and spend the next four years getting there from 1Ghz in three hundred Mhz increments, each time the price going up by $200.00. 100 years from now we will still live pretty much the way we live today. Any changes will be minimal maybe even nonexistent at the level of the middle class consumer.
Technological progress just always looks much more impressive in hindsight. There are things going on now that are totally under the radar that your children will look back on and wonder how we did without.
For example, we now already know how to build a running electric vehicle and we understand the logistics of setting up a network of 'chargers' to handle them. We just don't know how to make it 'cost effective' yet. That's a big barrier for a lot of environmental sciences especially. Solar pannels, wind turbines, organic foods, etc. are only expensive because the demand for them remains so low that they're niche products.
Even today, computers continue to advance and become more and more useful. We have devices that fit into your pocket that can carry out the same basic functions as devices you have to carry around in a bag. And those devices you carry around in a bag are even more useful. Do you think for a minute that even in the 90's it was feasible that you could live your entire life out of a thin, flat notebook?
I think we're just moving along at such an amazing rate that it all seems common and thus a whole lot less impressive.
Technological progress just always looks much more impressive in hindsight. There are things going on now that are totally under the radar that your children will look back on and wonder how we did without.
For example, we now already know how to build a running electric vehicle and we understand the logistics of setting up a network of 'chargers' to handle them. We just don't know how to make it 'cost effective' yet. That's a big barrier for a lot of environmental sciences especially. Solar pannels, wind turbines, organic foods, etc. are only expensive because the demand for them remains so low that they're niche products.
Even today, computers continue to advance and become more and more useful. We have devices that fit into your pocket that can carry out the same basic functions as devices you have to carry around in a bag. And those devices you carry around in a bag are even more useful. Do you think for a minute that even in the 90's it was feasible that you could live your entire life out of a thin, flat notebook?
I think we're just moving along at such an amazing rate that it all seems common and thus a whole lot less impressive.
You have to remember that electric vehicles were actually some of the very first automobiles produced, back in the early 1900s (perhaps teens, I don't remember the exact time).
With regard to computer technology, no doubt we have come a long ways in the last 10-15 years. But that's still evolution of what, 70s tech? When was Moore's law coined?
I still remember wind and solar power development going on back in the '70s, it was supposed to bring nearly free, clean power to everyone. My electric bill says we're not there yet.
We do have technologies and an understanding of science that have never existed in history. Perhaps we are on the brink of the next great leap in progress, only time will tell.
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. Or at least one that drives itself so I can nap on the way home from work. The next generation can work on the transporter.
