5 ms·

Name me the important technological innovations in the last 40 years that are not based on (or directly linked to, like shotgun genome sequencing) computation.

unlikelymordant 10y ago
Tell you all the major advances we've had, not including the major advances? What do you have against computation? Also, crispr will be huge. The way you define advancement also seems to ignore incremental improvements, and the incremental improvements weve made in all fields in the last 40 years is vast.
- internaut 10y ago
  The Internet is of revolutionary importance. However even with the most sophisticated data per second flows, virtual and augmented reality, we still need progress in the physical realm or our infrastructure will fall around our ears while we're constructing the New World. > crispr will be huge. What do you think they said about? 1. The discovery of DNA. 1.1 The Human Genome Project. 1.1.1 CRISPR 1.1.1.1 ???? The ability to cut and paste DNA is a great advance but people expected revolutionary steps forward in the past too and were disappointed with actual results. Anytime you hear 'biotech this' or 'biotech that', recall to mind only about 16 new biotech drugs are allowed onto the market, and I bet you cannot name any off the top of your head. That tells you something. It is worth knowing what our grandparents really thought about the future. I strongly recommend you watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4 > The way you define advancement also seems to ignore incremental improvements, and the incremental improvements weve made in all fields in the last 40 years is vast Far from it! I am concerned that people are being chronocentric e.g. They have forgotten that energy prices used to be much, much cheaper. Exponentially cheaper! I have two proposals for you. 1. Technology means doing more, with less. Less input, more output. 2. The basic metric for economic progress is that prices go downwards. These are straight forward claims. They are not outrageous. In areas where we have clear progress, like computation, finding downward trending prices is easy. In other areas the answer is far less clear and I find people become prone to rationalization instead of imagining a better possible present and future. I'm not a pessimist. I just think we could be doing a whole lot more. It took me considerable time to realize that not everything was progressing and there were giant gaping holes in that reasoning.
monort 10y ago
MRI, Blue LED, Scanning Tunneling Microscope, Graphene
graycat 10y ago
Stealth airplanes. Coronary artery stents. Genetically modified foods. The proof of Fermat's last theorem. Much cheaper solar panels. Fracking for oil and gas. Gem quality synthetic diamonds. No doubt various medicines, medical procedures, prosthetics, but I'm not a medical expert. GPS. Much cheaper titanium. Carbon fiber. CDs. DVDs. 14 nm line width lithography. The astounding progress in hard disk drive density and price. WiFi. Cable modems. The Hubble telescope. Gravitational wave detection. The Higgs boson detection. High temperature superconductivity. The scanning tunneling electron microscope. The cameras in smartphones. Color inkjet printers. Color laser printers. LEDs. Hypersonic ram jets.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  * CDs and DVDs need computation for doing the error correction, not to mention compression for the latter * WiFi needs to do channel modeling * You can't frack if you can't do the computational work needed to find the reserves in the first place
  - graycat 10y ago
    Yes, but in principle the computing for the fracking could have been done with the computers 40+ years old. Yes, but, e.g., CD/DVDs are also terrific because of how the lasers are used to read/write the disks. So, CD/DVDs are amazing even without the connection with computing. So, the computing is not the whole story. IMHO, similarly for the other examples I gave.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
      > Yes, but in principle the computing for the fracking could have been done with the computers 40+ years old Doubtful. The size of the meshes needed for good-enough solutions to the PDEs is immense (and there's a reason the oil and gas industry has been buying supercomputers since the early days).
      - graycat 10y ago

unlikelymordant 10y ago

Tell you all the major advances we've had, not including the major advances? What do you have against computation? Also, crispr will be huge. The way you define advancement also seems to ignore incremental improvements, and the incremental improvements weve made in all fields in the last 40 years is vast.

internaut 10y ago
The Internet is of revolutionary importance. However even with the most sophisticated data per second flows, virtual and augmented reality, we still need progress in the physical realm or our infrastructure will fall around our ears while we're constructing the New World. > crispr will be huge. What do you think they said about? 1. The discovery of DNA. 1.1 The Human Genome Project. 1.1.1 CRISPR 1.1.1.1 ???? The ability to cut and paste DNA is a great advance but people expected revolutionary steps forward in the past too and were disappointed with actual results. Anytime you hear 'biotech this' or 'biotech that', recall to mind only about 16 new biotech drugs are allowed onto the market, and I bet you cannot name any off the top of your head. That tells you something. It is worth knowing what our grandparents really thought about the future. I strongly recommend you watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4 > The way you define advancement also seems to ignore incremental improvements, and the incremental improvements weve made in all fields in the last 40 years is vast Far from it! I am concerned that people are being chronocentric e.g. They have forgotten that energy prices used to be much, much cheaper. Exponentially cheaper! I have two proposals for you. 1. Technology means doing more, with less. Less input, more output. 2. The basic metric for economic progress is that prices go downwards. These are straight forward claims. They are not outrageous. In areas where we have clear progress, like computation, finding downward trending prices is easy. In other areas the answer is far less clear and I find people become prone to rationalization instead of imagining a better possible present and future. I'm not a pessimist. I just think we could be doing a whole lot more. It took me considerable time to realize that not everything was progressing and there were giant gaping holes in that reasoning.

monort 10y ago

MRI, Blue LED, Scanning Tunneling Microscope, Graphene

graycat 10y ago

Stealth airplanes. Coronary artery stents. Genetically modified foods. The proof of Fermat's last theorem. Much cheaper solar panels. Fracking for oil and gas. Gem quality synthetic diamonds. No doubt various medicines, medical procedures, prosthetics, but I'm not a medical expert. GPS. Much cheaper titanium. Carbon fiber. CDs. DVDs. 14 nm line width lithography. The astounding progress in hard disk drive density and price. WiFi. Cable modems. The Hubble telescope. Gravitational wave detection. The Higgs boson detection. High temperature superconductivity. The scanning tunneling electron microscope. The cameras in smartphones. Color inkjet printers. Color laser printers. LEDs. Hypersonic ram jets.

GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
* CDs and DVDs need computation for doing the error correction, not to mention compression for the latter * WiFi needs to do channel modeling * You can't frack if you can't do the computational work needed to find the reserves in the first place
- graycat 10y ago
  Yes, but in principle the computing for the fracking could have been done with the computers 40+ years old. Yes, but, e.g., CD/DVDs are also terrific because of how the lasers are used to read/write the disks. So, CD/DVDs are amazing even without the connection with computing. So, the computing is not the whole story. IMHO, similarly for the other examples I gave.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
    > Yes, but in principle the computing for the fracking could have been done with the computers 40+ years old Doubtful. The size of the meshes needed for good-enough solutions to the PDEs is immense (and there's a reason the oil and gas industry has been buying supercomputers since the early days).
    - graycat 10y ago