4 ms·

I think he's making a good point. You can't deny that the technological advances in the last 15 years were bigger than than in the last 200. He's just saying t

by zeeone 17y ago

I think he's making a good point. You can't deny that the technological advances in the last 15 years were bigger than than in the last 200. He's just saying that all of that is easily taken for granted.

Psyonic 17y ago
The routine is funny. That said, without constant effort to appreciate it, everything is easily taken for granted. Give Cinderella a year or two after she married the prince, and she's probably a stuck up bitch who yells at the maid.
othello 17y ago
I beg to differ. You could argue that the advances in technology since 1995 (while substantial, notably in IT) do not compare with the breakthroughs accomplished since 1810. Although we do enjoy faster and more mobile access to internet and computing in general, most of the advances over the past 15 years are incremental improvements over technologies that already existed back then. What breakthroughs comparable to the advent of e.g. the train, the plane or antibiotics occured over the last 15 years?
- raquo 17y ago
  Yet there are now a lot more incremental advances per year than 200 years ago. Revolutions can only happen only so often. Apart from that, an "average technology" today has on average much more applications than back then, IMHO (convergence, I would call that). And it's adopted faster and is available to more people (=cheaper). Also, I think that today's breakthroughs have much more prerequisites in humanity's knowledge and capabilities in different fields than 200 years ago.
- scythe 17y ago
  The introduction of HIV protease inhibitors in 1995-6 was pretty big. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/338/13/853 http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/338/13/853 > Mortality among the patients declined from 29.4 per 100 person-years in 1995 to 8.8 per 100 person-years in the second quarter of 1997.
culled 17y ago
I'm not quite sure if you're saying that technology has been progressing at a faster rate in the past 15 years than it has in the previous 200 (which I'd agree with) or that we've had greater progress in the past 15 years than we did in the previous 200 combined (which is absurd).
- qwzybug 17y ago
  That's a very important distinction to make, which a lot of people elide right over (I'm looking at you, singularitarians). We've been moving really fast recently, but the destination is pretty mediocre in a lot of ways. C.f. Warren Ellis: "Having a nice robot phone is not an acceptable substitute for a future." http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/05/start/warren-ellis.aspx http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/05/start/...
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 17y ago
> You can't deny that the technological advances in the last 15 years were bigger than than in the last 200. I can and it's nonsense. Nuclear power? The Electrical Grid? The Industrial revolution? The transportation revolution? Mass airtravel? Genetics? Electronics? Versus what ? The internet? Cell phones? Sure it's great but it definitely isn't bigger by any yardstick than what preceded it, in fact plenty of those previous inventions were pre-requisites for those to be possible in the first place. I'd bet you could live just fine in the world of 15 years ago, but I'd challenge you to live in the one from 200 years ago.
- eru 17y ago
  The internet and cell phones have been around for more than 15 years. (Even the web has been around longer.) The record in mathematics is pretty good. E.g. compiling functional programming languages made huge strides in the last two decades. And so did linear and integer optimization.

by zeeone 17y ago

Psyonic 17y ago

The routine is funny. That said, without constant effort to appreciate it, everything is easily taken for granted. Give Cinderella a year or two after she married the prince, and she's probably a stuck up bitch who yells at the maid.

othello 17y ago

I beg to differ. You could argue that the advances in technology since 1995 (while substantial, notably in IT) do not compare with the breakthroughs accomplished since 1810. Although we do enjoy faster and more mobile access to internet and computing in general, most of the advances over the past 15 years are incremental improvements over technologies that already existed back then. What breakthroughs comparable to the advent of e.g. the train, the plane or antibiotics occured over the last 15 years?

raquo 17y ago
Yet there are now a lot more incremental advances per year than 200 years ago. Revolutions can only happen only so often. Apart from that, an "average technology" today has on average much more applications than back then, IMHO (convergence, I would call that). And it's adopted faster and is available to more people (=cheaper). Also, I think that today's breakthroughs have much more prerequisites in humanity's knowledge and capabilities in different fields than 200 years ago.
scythe 17y ago
The introduction of HIV protease inhibitors in 1995-6 was pretty big. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/338/13/853 http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/338/13/853 > Mortality among the patients declined from 29.4 per 100 person-years in 1995 to 8.8 per 100 person-years in the second quarter of 1997.

culled 17y ago

I'm not quite sure if you're saying that technology has been progressing at a faster rate in the past 15 years than it has in the previous 200 (which I'd agree with) or that we've had greater progress in the past 15 years than we did in the previous 200 combined (which is absurd).

qwzybug 17y ago
That's a very important distinction to make, which a lot of people elide right over (I'm looking at you, singularitarians). We've been moving really fast recently, but the destination is pretty mediocre in a lot of ways. C.f. Warren Ellis: "Having a nice robot phone is not an acceptable substitute for a future." http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/05/start/warren-ellis.aspx http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/05/start/...

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 17y ago

> You can't deny that the technological advances in the last 15 years were bigger than than in the last 200. I can and it's nonsense. Nuclear power? The Electrical Grid? The Industrial revolution? The transportation revolution? Mass airtravel? Genetics? Electronics? Versus what ? The internet? Cell phones? Sure it's great but it definitely isn't bigger by any yardstick than what preceded it, in fact plenty of those previous inventions were pre-requisites for those to be possible in the first place. I'd bet you could live just fine in the world of 15 years ago, but I'd challenge you to live in the one from 200 years ago.

eru 17y ago
The internet and cell phones have been around for more than 15 years. (Even the web has been around longer.) The record in mathematics is pretty good. E.g. compiling functional programming languages made huge strides in the last two decades. And so did linear and integer optimization.