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>In this day of internet and seemingly constant change, I think it's hard to recognize that change is less drastic now than it was 100 years ago. Much of today

by gozur88 10y ago

>In this day of internet and seemingly constant change, I think it's hard to recognize that change is less drastic now than it was 100 years ago. Much of today's change is cosmetic, or a matter of added convenience. Flight, electronics, vaccines, antibiotics... those kind of changes affect how you really live. People in the early 20th century imagined we'd have rocket ships, ray guns, 600 year lifespans, and robot servants by now because they were projecting forward based on the speed of change in their own time. Near as I can figure the pace of technological development really slowed down in the 1970s and has continued slowing. Whether this is because something fundamental has created stagnation or, as Tyler Cowen proposed, we've eaten all the low hanging fruit, I couldn't say.

dredmorbius 10y ago
A slight quibble: not all the change is simply cosmetic. The ways in which we interact with things can change quite markedly. If you're deep in the guts of technology, any technology, this is quite apparent. I've heard the comment made by programmers, Web designers, auto mechanics, doctors, carpenters, and more. But the impacts of those changes ... not so much. The whole concept of impact measurement is its own ball of waxworms, but there are some areas we can look at. Medicine, for example, improved life expectancy twice as much from 1900-1950 as from 1950 to today. The low-hanging fruit really mattered. Air travel today is slower than in 1970s, when ground and airport delays are considered. A multi-millionfold increase in compute power has extended long-range weather prediction from five days to ... seven. (Though the minute-by-minute near-term forecasts can be uncannily accurate.) In researching material (something I do a lot of these days), there are the benefits of online access, but I'm ultimately blocked by the rate at which I myself can read and understand new information. (And not get distracted replying to comments on HN.)

by gozur88 10y ago

dredmorbius 10y ago

A slight quibble: not all the change is simply cosmetic. The ways in which we interact with things can change quite markedly. If you're deep in the guts of technology, any technology, this is quite apparent. I've heard the comment made by programmers, Web designers, auto mechanics, doctors, carpenters, and more. But the impacts of those changes ... not so much. The whole concept of impact measurement is its own ball of waxworms, but there are some areas we can look at. Medicine, for example, improved life expectancy twice as much from 1900-1950 as from 1950 to today. The low-hanging fruit really mattered. Air travel today is slower than in 1970s, when ground and airport delays are considered. A multi-millionfold increase in compute power has extended long-range weather prediction from five days to ... seven. (Though the minute-by-minute near-term forecasts can be uncannily accurate.) In researching material (something I do a lot of these days), there are the benefits of online access, but I'm ultimately blocked by the rate at which I myself can read and understand new information. (And not get distracted replying to comments on HN.)