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There's 23 years between the Macintosh in 1984 and the iPhone in 2007. Real paradigm shifts in computing are rare. People who think the iPhone is going to be su

by IBM 10y ago

There's 23 years between the Macintosh in 1984 and the iPhone in 2007. Real paradigm shifts in computing are rare. People who think the iPhone is going to be supplanted by whatever en vogue technology is being hyped in the media today should keep that in mind. Especially considering that Apple still sells PCs 40 years into its life (how many computer companies have gone the way of the dinosaur in that time?) and has a virtual lock on the high end of that market.

tempestn 10y ago
That's a good point, but if you believe that the rate of technological advancement is still increasing as it has been throughout modern history, you would expect each successive paradigm shift to come more quickly than the last (aside from some noise, obviously). Of course, the shift may not come in a field we currently think of as being involved with personal computing. (Much like we wouldn't have thought of cellphones as such in the 90s.)
- simonh 10y ago
  I don't think the pace of technological advancement is increasing. I think it probably peaked some time before the year 2000, possibly around 1990. It's still pretty fast, but gradually decelerating. Individual technologies each follow their own advancement curve. Jet and rocket engine advancement flattened out in the 60s and 70s. Moore's Law is history. Rising life expectancy are now mainly about expanding long life to more people, not extending how long the longest lived survive. New technologies generally have a slow start, then a sharp rise in performance/drop in cost, then those advances level off. But where are the new technologies that will provide further rapid advances? Our aircraft still have jet engines, our rockets still burn the same fuels, our chips are still made of silicon. Electric cars are great, but battery technology is reaching it's limits, as is solar tech which is finally coming into it's own after a very long development history. Finally, on AI research I recently posted the following on a different thread: 1960s Herbert Simmons predicts "Machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do." 1993 - Vernor Vinge predicts super-intelligent AIs 'within 30 years'. 2011 ray Kurzweil predicts the singularity (enabled by super-intelligent AIs) will occur by 2045, 34 years after the prediction was made. So the distance into the future before we achieve strong AI and hence the singularity is, according to it's most optimistic proponents, receding by more than 1 year per year.
- throwanem 10y ago
  > if you believe that the rate of technological advancement is still increasing It made sense for Robert Heinlein to believe this in the 1950s, when he wrote an article prefiguring the "technological singularity" concept by a good forty years. It may make less sense for someone to continue to believe the same thing in 2017.
  - tempestn 10y ago
    It may, although I'm not ready to discount the possibility yet. Another thing that has been seen throughout history is people claiming progress is at an end. I can't remember the source, but there's a famous quote from the early 1900s that everything important in physics had already been discovered. People also theorized progress would slow after peak coal was reached. There are many more examples. I would suggest that whatever time one is living in, it feels like all the major advancement is behind us, and things will slow from here. It may indeed be true now, or it could just be that we're feeling the tail end of a couple S-curves (Moore's law especially) and can't fully appreciate what the next paradigm will be.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      > Another thing that has been seen throughout history is people claiming progress is at an end. That's always seemed like an early symptom of dotage to me.

by IBM 10y ago

tempestn 10y ago

That's a good point, but if you believe that the rate of technological advancement is still increasing as it has been throughout modern history, you would expect each successive paradigm shift to come more quickly than the last (aside from some noise, obviously). Of course, the shift may not come in a field we currently think of as being involved with personal computing. (Much like we wouldn't have thought of cellphones as such in the 90s.)

simonh 10y ago
I don't think the pace of technological advancement is increasing. I think it probably peaked some time before the year 2000, possibly around 1990. It's still pretty fast, but gradually decelerating. Individual technologies each follow their own advancement curve. Jet and rocket engine advancement flattened out in the 60s and 70s. Moore's Law is history. Rising life expectancy are now mainly about expanding long life to more people, not extending how long the longest lived survive. New technologies generally have a slow start, then a sharp rise in performance/drop in cost, then those advances level off. But where are the new technologies that will provide further rapid advances? Our aircraft still have jet engines, our rockets still burn the same fuels, our chips are still made of silicon. Electric cars are great, but battery technology is reaching it's limits, as is solar tech which is finally coming into it's own after a very long development history. Finally, on AI research I recently posted the following on a different thread: 1960s Herbert Simmons predicts "Machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do." 1993 - Vernor Vinge predicts super-intelligent AIs 'within 30 years'. 2011 ray Kurzweil predicts the singularity (enabled by super-intelligent AIs) will occur by 2045, 34 years after the prediction was made. So the distance into the future before we achieve strong AI and hence the singularity is, according to it's most optimistic proponents, receding by more than 1 year per year.
throwanem 10y ago
> if you believe that the rate of technological advancement is still increasing It made sense for Robert Heinlein to believe this in the 1950s, when he wrote an article prefiguring the "technological singularity" concept by a good forty years. It may make less sense for someone to continue to believe the same thing in 2017.
- tempestn 10y ago
  It may, although I'm not ready to discount the possibility yet. Another thing that has been seen throughout history is people claiming progress is at an end. I can't remember the source, but there's a famous quote from the early 1900s that everything important in physics had already been discovered. People also theorized progress would slow after peak coal was reached. There are many more examples. I would suggest that whatever time one is living in, it feels like all the major advancement is behind us, and things will slow from here. It may indeed be true now, or it could just be that we're feeling the tail end of a couple S-curves (Moore's law especially) and can't fully appreciate what the next paradigm will be.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    > Another thing that has been seen throughout history is people claiming progress is at an end. That's always seemed like an early symptom of dotage to me.