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This article claims the pace of technological change is not accelerating. Do you agree? It's a question I sometimes have when I think about how people still haven't returned to the moon since 1972, and airplanes commercial airplanes fly at similar speeds as those 40 years ago. I know computing technology has changed a lot, but in other fields change seems limited. https://leadingedgeforum.com/publica...lerating-2502/
Moon exploration has been hobbled by lack of government funding. Maybe the 1% group will finance some Moon trips. There was the Concorde as far as airplane speed, but it was very un-green and polluting, and too expensive. And with 3-hour lines and added security at airports, who cares if you save an hour or two in flight time?
I also think that there is an inherent limit to how much people can adjust to change, which limits adoption of new technology. Many people I know are no longer willing to endure the time-consuming learning curve invariably associated with new gadgets. There are classes now on how to use an iPhone. How many people actually watch 500+ TV channels? Or use all the features on their computers? And people have been burned by technology, like spending money for VHS players which lasted a minute and then went to DVD players which are now unneeded with streaming. Or Apple TV. Or flip phones.
There is the argument that youth are the fastest adapters, but they are also the first to abandon good products for those that have a certain cachet or status factor. And really, most consumer tech is purely optional. For most people, need drives adoption. I could have kept my flip phone if texting hadn't spread. And I haven't seen anyone wearing an Apple watch except the help in Apple stores.
It's a question I sometimes have when I think about how people still haven't returned to the moon since 1972,
It's very expensive and dangerous to send people to the moon, for what reason? Isn't that money better spent on sending a car sized robot to Mars?
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and airplanes commercial airplanes fly at similar speeds as those 40 years ago.
Supersonic flight is expensive and has it's own issues, in particular the sonic boom. Realistically they can only be flown over the ocean.
Back in the 60's Boeing started developing both the 747 and a supersonic commercial jet while England and France were focusing on the Concorde. The 747 and the Concorde flew at nearly the same exact time, the 747 went onto to be the most successful commercial plane ever and the Concorde was relegated to flying around wealthy passengers. Boeing dropped their supersonic development afterward because it was just too expensive and not practical, it wasn't that it couldn't be done.
I don't consider this hitting a technological wall, you're hitting the wall of practicality. A 300HP car is common today and they are doing it with 6 cylinders, does it make practical sense though?
It's very expensive and dangerous to send people to the moon, for what reason? Isn't that money better spent on sending a car sized robot to Mars?
Supersonic flight is expensive and has it's own issues, in particular the sonic boom. Realistically they can only be flown over the ocean.
Back in the 60's Boeing started developing both the 747 and a supersonic commercial jet while England and France were focusing on the Concorde. The 747 and the Concorde flew at nearly the same exact time, the 747 went onto to be the most successful commercial plane ever and the Concorde was relegated to flying around wealthy passengers. Boeing dropped their supersonic development afterward because it was just too expensive and not practical, it wasn't that it couldn't be done.
I don't consider this hitting a technological wall, you're hitting the wall of practicality. A 300HP car is common today and they are doing it with 6 cylinders, does it make practical sense though?
Personally I think that sending a person is the whole point. Also the human can and will produce much more information that the limited ability of the robot.
Supersonic flight went south because of the noise. Not because it was impractical. Concords were always full and always made money unlike normal commercial aviation. The expectation was to use them on ong flights such as to LA from Paris. However it was almost impossible to get permission to overfly land due to the sonic boom. You ever price a seat on one? Generally about 12K round trip.
I flew round trip to France. It was about 3.5 hours compared to the 8 hour normal flight. Afterburners part of the way. The plane held about 100 people and grossed about 600k per flight. About 40k of that was fuel. Of course they made profit. There were NO waiting lines . TSA was in Full effect when I flew but people even walked up to the ticket counter while the plane was loading and got on.
We are not hitting a technological wall. We are hitting a wall of regulation and greed. Computers made the strides they did because it was agreed very early on by players in the field that the technology would be freely available. I still have one of the tapes Richie distributed of the C language I got by simply writing a letter and requesting it. He among others did this because they believed that innovation was made by people in their garages. Not Labs. Which if fact turned out to be quite true in the computer revolution. The whole point is that either you have 100 guys working in a Lab or a half million working in their garages. Which has the better odds?
Unfortunately, things are not like this anymore and in most places working in your garage is illegal.
The article uses one measure of the rate of technological change (the length of time from introduction to 50% household penetration) and while it is valid as far as it goes, I don't think it is the ultimate measure. To me, that would be the sum total of human knowledge and its transparent accessibility ... which I believe so far IS continuing to accelerate.
That said, it is often forgotten that the rate of accumulation of knowledge and the exploitation and dissemination of it are two different things. The market and the societal and political landscape do have upper limits on how fast they can ABSORB change. My brother for instance has always thought the notion of a flying car is something that would be cool to see in his lifetime (he is currently 69) but like a manned Mars mission it always seems to be 20 years away, no matter what year you're talking about. Likely, with autonomous ground-bound autos coming into vogue, eventually autonomous or semi-autonomous features for guiding a "flying car" (and collision-avoidance) will make simplified licensing and greater safety and redundancy such that they will reach some tipping-point and will become commonplace (for some given value of "commonplace", as they will still cost more than "normal" cars).
But that still leaves other concerns. How much of current security measures assume a paucity of quiet hovercraft? Suddenly if people can land inside fenced grounds and on roofs, that security becomes partially ineffective. What about the dangers of children playing near a landing craft who get their eyes damaged from the downwash? We'd have to develop dedicated landing pads in safe areas and require drivers to use roads for the "last mile" to their destination. We'd have to do something to prevent trespassing despite fences and signs. Laws would have to be modified or passed. Precedents would have to be adjudicated.
All of this costs money and takes time and that's not going to happen just because an idea is cool. It has to have benefits that are more compelling than the costs, not just for individuals, but for society.
Personally I think that sending a person is the whole point.
I realize that but we have already done it, numerous times. Sending someone to Mars on the other hand while probably entirely impractical is certainly a goal to set because it's the next step to human space exploration. Don't shoot for the moon, shoot for the moon. <lol see what I did there> :P
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Also the human can and will produce much more information that the limited ability of the robot.
I'm not sure why you would think that. The fundamental issue with putting people into space is you need to keep them alive. Instead of spending money on scientific equipment and utilizing the limited amount of payload for it you're building and launching life support systems. Once they get to the moon or wherever else they are encumbered by bulky space suits and have a very limited amount of time.
Curiosity on the other hand has been roving around since 2012... The next one is going to have superior AI....
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Unfortunately, things are not like this anymore and in most places working in your garage is illegal.
Said while posting to a site serving pages that use the open standards HTML and CSS that is most likely running on a *nix OS, Apache server, PHP server side scripting, MySQL database.... all of which is open source. Even the forum software which is licensed could be replaced with comparable open source software. You could literally pay $0 to have a site like this other than the costs of the hardware and resources it requires.
I realize that but we have already done it, numerous times. Sending someone to Mars on the other hand while probably entirely impractical is certainly a goal to set because it's the next step to human space exploration. Don't shoot for the moon, shoot for the moon. <lol see what I did there> :P
I'm not sure why you would think that. The fundamental issue with putting people into space is you need to keep them alive. Instead of spending money on scientific equipment and utilizing the limited amount of payload for it you're building and launching life support systems. Once they get to the moon or wherever else they are encumbered by bulky space suits and have a very limited amount of time.
Curiosity on the other hand has been roving around since 2012... The next one is going to have superior AI....
Said while posting to a site serving pages that use the open standards HTML and CSS that is most likely running on a *nix OS, Apache server, PHP server side scripting, MySQL database.... all of which is open source. Even the forum software which is licensed could be replaced with comparable open source software. You could literally pay $0 to have a site like this other than the costs of the hardware and resources it requires.
Webwork costs more than you think. i work with all those and many more. However they dont make money. They are pretty much a required specification that needs to be met to provide connectivity. Many people, Myself included have their own apps that may or may not parse these. It is better to have your own these days which only use the required protocol for parsing and nothing more. When everyone knows the code, it is easily hack able.
...When everyone knows the code, it is easily hack able.
That's certainly not true - there are plenty of sites using open-source web servers running on open-source operating systems that aren't "easily hack able."
That's certainly not true - there are plenty of sites using open-source web servers running on open-source operating systems that aren't "easily hack able."
What, Yours? I read about them all the time on the news. "Target Hacked 10 million credit card numbers stolen" "Verizon 1.5 million customer records up for sale" "LinkedIn 400 million members data breach" "Such and such Power distribution hacked" so on and so forth.
Shall I go on?
Mine are NEVER hacked because I dont use open source. I dont even use a standard file system so even if someone does manage to copy some data to a flash drive, they will never, ever be able to read it.
When everyone knows the code, it is easily hack able.
Not necessarily, you are one person. Do you think your skills stack up against the combined efforts of 100's of expert developers and hundreds of thousands or even millions testing it? Open source may expose exploits but it exposes them to everyone. The good guys outnumber the bad guys.
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