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I don't think it's reasonable to equate 'technologies that existed since the 60s' with 'technologies that are ubiquitous today'. I'm in the bottom 15% of my co

I don't think it's reasonable to equate 'technologies that existed since the 60s' with 'technologies that are ubiquitous today'. I'm in the bottom 15% of my country (UK) by income and I have access to things like: near-instantaneous hot water at all times, affordable next-day delivery services from a pocket-sized device I carry around with me, international air travel that is affordable for me, efficient fridge/freezer technology, fresh groceries from around the world at every local convenience store. And yes things look a lot less impressive if you filter out information-technology related things. But advancements will always look less impressive if you filter out the most impressive advancements. The fact that we are close to permanently connected across geographical boundaries now isn't something to be dismissed out of hand. The level of effectiveness and miniaturisation of communications devices (e.g. 'true wireless' earphones with mobile internet) is really approaching the point of being practical telepathy insofar as it can be used.

bad_user 10y ago
> I'm in the bottom 15% of my country (UK) by income Dude, no offense, but you're talking about the center of an empire that's literally the biggest that the world has ever seen. That your country is wealthy and can provide for your basic necessities has more to do with this little historical fact than it does with technological advances.
- paperpunk 10y ago
  That's a fair point, but it does align with what I was trying to get across. That being that achieving 'technological progress' with a milestone that applies only to the super wealthy is only one part of technological progress. Bringing it to millions of people at an affordable cost is also something worth considering.
- ben_w 10y ago
  Former empire. Yes it's still rich, yes the boundary of the bottom 15% of the UK is the same as the top 9.7% of the world, but most of the former empire violently rejected the UK in the second half of the 20th century (and most of the rest before then). This collapse caused economic damage that was solved in part by joining the EU, so yay irony for bringing up the long-gone Empire just as my leaders are trying to get it back. ;P For the rest of the world… In the last 70 years, Ebloa and HIV were not only discovered but so were partial treatments; Smallpox has gone from "a vaccine exists" to "wiped out"; Rinderpest didn't have a vaccine and has been wiped out; Polio has gone from no-vaccination-possible to almost eradicated (37 cases in 2016); Guinea worm — mostly affecting the poor — has gone from multiple millions of cases per year to 25 individual cases. For wider medicine: the first organ transplants were kidney in 1950, pancreas in 1966, heart and liver both in 1967, ovary in 2005, penis in 2014; DNA has gone from "???" to fully readable and partially editable; ultrasound, pacemakers and IVF were invented, and antidepressants have improved. In industry, robotics relies on computer power, so I disagree with anyone who dismisses the development of computing power; likewise, telecommunications have gone from "phone calls within your town are expensive" to "let's have a live video chat across 8-time zones". The entirety of high-temperature superconductors happened after I was born, never mind going back as far as 70 years; Kevlar, Nomex, and carbon nanomaterials were all made for the first time in the last 70 years. The poor of the world don't have everything we have, with the exception of vaccines for illnesses we wish to eliminate, but even the stuff we discard often contains things that could not be bought at any price 70 years ago.
  - debuggerpk 10y ago
    excellent perspective. if we take the very narrow computing field, there have been considerable inventions, especially in the field of medical science.
ExactoKnight 10y ago
Almost everything you listed there already started becoming common by the 1960's. Step back and forget about informational technology. Look at the world of atoms, not at the world of bits. Since the decommissioning of the Concorde, our fastest commercial means of transportation has actually been getting slower, not faster. Man hasn't reached farther out in space than the moon missions of the 1960s. The first half the of the 20th century brought us: antibiotics, electricity, automobiles, air travel, rockets, space travel, satellites, radio, reliable clean drinking water, indoor heating, laundry machines, diswashers, widespread indoor plumbing, and massive improvements in sanitation / literacy. The second half of the 20th can't even come close to this level of technological growth.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Sure. But you cant seriously expect the discovery curve to be linear or exponential for that matter.
  - visarga 10y ago
    It's sigmoidal.
- notahacker 10y ago
  Not sure I'd consider stuff like the vast majority of human knowledge sitting in my pocket to be less useful than the dishwasher because it has fewer moving parts or most people can afford to fly to be less of an achievement than the megarich can fly 50% faster. Recent decades might a disappointment compared with the millenialist interpretation of exponential curves, but that's only the same as the disappointment a Victorian idealist might feel with the lack of stuff that happened in the twentieth century as a whole given that neither utopian socialism nor the Second Coming has occurred yet.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Not sure I'd consider stuff like the vast majority of human knowledge sitting in my pocket to be less useful than the dishwasher because it has fewer moving parts or most people can afford to fly to be less of an achievement than the megarich can fly 50% faster. Not sure anybody told you to consider that. What they did ask you to consider is that technological progress, outside of the digital realm, has been slowed down.
ralfd 10y ago
> near-instantaneous hot water at all times But only with two faucets.
cm2187 10y ago
And you can buy a super-computer (Raspberry PI, compared to the 50s or 60s) for some change.
- ExactoKnight 10y ago
  Again, that's information technology. That's one area where the past still moved fast like we are now, while the rest of us I am arguing hasn't (in terms of speed).
coldtea 10y ago
None of the above are new technologies (last decade(s) or so) developments -- except those that concern computers (which is in accordance to what the parent said).
- talmand 10y ago
  So, we don't consider efficiency gains and other improvements as being successful new developments?
  - coldtea 10y ago
    We can consider them "successful new developments" or whatever else we want. We just can't consider them important new discoveries in the sense that the creation of things like steam engine, air travel, jet engines, etc were (to stay with transportation). If you wish, the former are basically incremental engineering/efficiency improvements upon the latter. What the parent observed as lacking/slowing was non-incremental improvements.

bad_user 10y ago

> I'm in the bottom 15% of my country (UK) by income Dude, no offense, but you're talking about the center of an empire that's literally the biggest that the world has ever seen. That your country is wealthy and can provide for your basic necessities has more to do with this little historical fact than it does with technological advances.

paperpunk 10y ago
That's a fair point, but it does align with what I was trying to get across. That being that achieving 'technological progress' with a milestone that applies only to the super wealthy is only one part of technological progress. Bringing it to millions of people at an affordable cost is also something worth considering.
ben_w 10y ago
Former empire. Yes it's still rich, yes the boundary of the bottom 15% of the UK is the same as the top 9.7% of the world, but most of the former empire violently rejected the UK in the second half of the 20th century (and most of the rest before then). This collapse caused economic damage that was solved in part by joining the EU, so yay irony for bringing up the long-gone Empire just as my leaders are trying to get it back. ;P For the rest of the world… In the last 70 years, Ebloa and HIV were not only discovered but so were partial treatments; Smallpox has gone from "a vaccine exists" to "wiped out"; Rinderpest didn't have a vaccine and has been wiped out; Polio has gone from no-vaccination-possible to almost eradicated (37 cases in 2016); Guinea worm — mostly affecting the poor — has gone from multiple millions of cases per year to 25 individual cases. For wider medicine: the first organ transplants were kidney in 1950, pancreas in 1966, heart and liver both in 1967, ovary in 2005, penis in 2014; DNA has gone from "???" to fully readable and partially editable; ultrasound, pacemakers and IVF were invented, and antidepressants have improved. In industry, robotics relies on computer power, so I disagree with anyone who dismisses the development of computing power; likewise, telecommunications have gone from "phone calls within your town are expensive" to "let's have a live video chat across 8-time zones". The entirety of high-temperature superconductors happened after I was born, never mind going back as far as 70 years; Kevlar, Nomex, and carbon nanomaterials were all made for the first time in the last 70 years. The poor of the world don't have everything we have, with the exception of vaccines for illnesses we wish to eliminate, but even the stuff we discard often contains things that could not be bought at any price 70 years ago.
- debuggerpk 10y ago
  excellent perspective. if we take the very narrow computing field, there have been considerable inventions, especially in the field of medical science.

ExactoKnight 10y ago

Almost everything you listed there already started becoming common by the 1960's. Step back and forget about informational technology. Look at the world of atoms, not at the world of bits. Since the decommissioning of the Concorde, our fastest commercial means of transportation has actually been getting slower, not faster. Man hasn't reached farther out in space than the moon missions of the 1960s. The first half the of the 20th century brought us: antibiotics, electricity, automobiles, air travel, rockets, space travel, satellites, radio, reliable clean drinking water, indoor heating, laundry machines, diswashers, widespread indoor plumbing, and massive improvements in sanitation / literacy. The second half of the 20th can't even come close to this level of technological growth.

ekianjo 10y ago
Sure. But you cant seriously expect the discovery curve to be linear or exponential for that matter.
- visarga 10y ago
  It's sigmoidal.
notahacker 10y ago
Not sure I'd consider stuff like the vast majority of human knowledge sitting in my pocket to be less useful than the dishwasher because it has fewer moving parts or most people can afford to fly to be less of an achievement than the megarich can fly 50% faster. Recent decades might a disappointment compared with the millenialist interpretation of exponential curves, but that's only the same as the disappointment a Victorian idealist might feel with the lack of stuff that happened in the twentieth century as a whole given that neither utopian socialism nor the Second Coming has occurred yet.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Not sure I'd consider stuff like the vast majority of human knowledge sitting in my pocket to be less useful than the dishwasher because it has fewer moving parts or most people can afford to fly to be less of an achievement than the megarich can fly 50% faster. Not sure anybody told you to consider that. What they did ask you to consider is that technological progress, outside of the digital realm, has been slowed down.

ralfd 10y ago

> near-instantaneous hot water at all times But only with two faucets.

cm2187 10y ago

And you can buy a super-computer (Raspberry PI, compared to the 50s or 60s) for some change.

ExactoKnight 10y ago
Again, that's information technology. That's one area where the past still moved fast like we are now, while the rest of us I am arguing hasn't (in terms of speed).

coldtea 10y ago

None of the above are new technologies (last decade(s) or so) developments -- except those that concern computers (which is in accordance to what the parent said).

talmand 10y ago
So, we don't consider efficiency gains and other improvements as being successful new developments?
- coldtea 10y ago
  We can consider them "successful new developments" or whatever else we want. We just can't consider them important new discoveries in the sense that the creation of things like steam engine, air travel, jet engines, etc were (to stay with transportation). If you wish, the former are basically incremental engineering/efficiency improvements upon the latter. What the parent observed as lacking/slowing was non-incremental improvements.