3 ms·

> 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 w

> 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.

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.