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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 at

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.
  - meri_dian 10y ago
    The fact that a relatively low income individual has access to a large number of goods and services which were once considered exclusive to the wealthy is a clear indication that technological progress has continued at a steady pace. While 'slowed down' or 'sped up' are difficult to quantify, the fact that 3 billion human beings have gained access to smartphone technology over the last decade seems to support the idea that technological progress has in fact sped up. Increasing air transportation speed is a very narrow application of technology and hardly constitutes a meaningful gauge of technical innovation.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >The fact that a relatively low income individual has access to a large number of goods and services which were once considered exclusive to the wealthy is a clear indication that technological progress has continued at a steady pace. No, it's just a clear indication of market efficiencies and/or better engineering. It doesn't say anything about what the grandparent asked for: the rate and magnitude of new scientific/technologic discoveries.
      - soundwave106 10y ago
        One era (early 20th) is the industrial revolution; one era (approx. 1960-now) is the information revolution. It is true that the industrial revolution has slowed down and mostly focused on incremental improvements, but it seems strange to discount the information revolution gains completely. There's been a lot of information revolution gains. That said, I would argue that medicine too has made some pretty significant advances in the 2nd half of the 20th century... mostly in surgery techniques (transplants are 2nd half 20th century), scanning techniques (NMR and CT both were 2nd half 20th century), and pharmaceuticals. Significant vaccines (polio, measles, mumps) were 2nd half of the 20th century developments. Genetic science has made huge gains as of late. Etc.
      - notahacker 10y ago
        But half of the "world of atoms" things the grandparent listed were also market efficiencies or better engineering. Trading average speed for vast improvements in energy efficiency in aircraft in order to make flight accessible to the masses certainly involved vastly more progress of a technical and scientific nature in the late twentieth century than the cited early twentieth century example of wider replication of well-understood principles of plumbing to give the masses indoor toilets.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>The second half of the 20th can't even come close to this level of technological growth. The Green Revolution was a thing. Mass starvation was prevented by technical means.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Since the decommissioning of the Concorde, our fastest commercial means of transportation has actually been getting slower, not faster. Our means of travel have also gotten vastly more efficient. Prioritizing progress in average efficiency over speed of a showpiece that is used for a very small share of actual travel isn't the end of progress, and it is very much change in the world of atoms, not bits.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Our means of travel have also gotten vastly more efficient. Hardly vastly. At best within an order of magnitude better, but not even close to that.
  - iwintermute 10y ago
    It has gotten twice as cheap (if you look at average ticket prices adjusted to inflation) from 70 to now. Also point about concorde - it's more fuel efficient to fly slower (look at drag coefficient [1]) So from point of view of affordability and mobility for general public - it's good progress. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_transport#/media/File:Qualitive_variation_of_cd_with_mach_number.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_transport#/media/Fi...
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >It has gotten twice as cheap (if you look at average ticket prices adjusted to inflation) from 70 to now. Which is consistent with the gp's point that progress has slowed down. It had gotten 100 to 1000 times cheaper, faster, more efficient to e.g. travel intercontinentally between the 1900 to 1970 that it has between 1970 to now.
    - ExactoKnight 10y ago
      Efficiency is something you begin to care about when the original technology itself is no longer providing the wow factor it used to bring. For efficiency to be considered a huge leap in progress, it needs to be a change on the order of magnitudes....
graeham 10y ago
Oil prices are essentially capped at $60/barrel for the foreseeable future due to unconventional extraction techniques -> was not long ago oil production was thought to have peaked. Solar power can be economical without subsidy. Robotic and minimally invasive surgery. Battery cost becoming viable for mass-market cars. Gene sequencing. Sensors for pennies. New materials (cheaper carbon fibre, metal alloys, semiconductors, graphine/carbon nanotubes). Most of the things mentioned as 'first half of 20th century' coming to the next 5 billion people. For aerospace, how about affordability of a ticket over time (Ryanair vs Concorde)? Space travel: number of journeys per vehicle or time astronauts are able to spend in space (was minutes in early space flight, unlimited now). Transportation speed is a straw-man, the industry optimises for cost not speed.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  No, because you're failing to distinguish between game-changer tech - transistors, DNA sequencing, operating systems, powered flight, all as classes of original and unexpected inventions - and refinement tech, which is made of game-changer inventions made smaller, cheaper, and more widely avaialable. Game changer tech changes what can be imagined. Refinement tech changes what can be bought by consumers. There's been plenty of refinement over the last few decades, but not nearly as much original game changer invention as in the previous decades.
  - ExactoKnight 10y ago
    Exactly. Peter Thiel's book Zero to One is actually named after this. Refinement is taking existing tech and moving it up (e.g. 10 to 30). Thiel argues real game changer tech emerges when it brings us from 0 to 1. From nothing to something huge.
areyousure 10y ago
I learned a lot from researching the topics mentioned in this post, and hopefully someone else can also benefit from the following information. tl;dr: Indoor heating significantly predates 1900. Though relevant inventions largely predate 1900, widespread adoption was indeed between 1900 and 1950 for electrification, automobiles, air travel, radio, washing machines, and indoor plumbing. The years after 1950 include most of the developments and use of the Concorde, moon missions, antibiotics, rockets, and dishwashers. I can only describe the inclusion of "space travel" and "satellites" in a list of things from the "first half of the 20th century" as trolling. The remainder of my post is what I found for each topic. The Concorde flew from 1969 to 2003. The last time humans traveled past low-Earth orbit was 1972. (Space exploration itself started in 1957, and since then unmanned space probes have explored no shortage of interesting targets.) Penicillin was identified in 1928 but first made available to civilians in 1945. Of the ~50 antibiotics on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, I found 7 discovered before 1950: penicillin G, penicillin V, chloramphenicol, dapsone, 4-aminosalicylic acid, streptomycin, and pyrazinamide. The final one was not used until after 1950. The basics of electricity, including arc lighting (1802), incandescent lightbulbs (1878), motors (1832 or even the 1740s?), telegraphs (1774), power stations, alternating current, etc were all invented and in use before 1900. Of course, the period of electrification in now-developed countries was roughly from the mid-1880s until around 1950. The basics of automobiles also predate 1900, but mass production began around then. Many major developments in automobiles indeed happened between 1900 and 1950. Air travel via balloons predates 1900 by more than a century, but both rigid airships and (controlled, powered) heaver-than-air flight developed between 1900 and 1950. Rockets were first developed by the 13th century, and found significant and widespread military use before 1900 (eg, the Star-Spangled banner was written in 1814). Modern rocketry probably began in 1926 with the first liquid-fueled rocket launched by Goddard. Germany used the V-2 rocket throughout WWII, and this presumably is the reason for inclusion in "the first half of the 20th century". As mentioned previously, the use of rockets for space exploration (and thus also satellites) did not begin until 1957 with the launch of Sputnik. Human spaceflight began in 1961. Early radio predates 1900, but indeed radio largely developed between 1900 and 1950. I had difficulty summarizing the history of water treatment; it seems that many inventions predated 1900 but indeed the period between 1900 and 1950 was the main significant period of development in the United States. Indoor heating predates the invention of writing. Almost every development in the history and widespread use of heating predates 1900. Washing machines predate 1900, but the development and widespread use of electric washing machines was indeed between 1900 and 1950. Dishwashers also predate 1900. Significant aspects of their development happened between 1900 and 1950, but their widespread use was after 1950. Indoor plumbing predated 1900 by millennia, but indeed the widespread period of adoption in the United States was between 1900 and 1950. I do not know how to summarize the improvements in sanitation, but I would probably say that 1900 to 1950 did not feature particularly notable improvements in literacy.

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.
- meri_dian 10y ago
  The fact that a relatively low income individual has access to a large number of goods and services which were once considered exclusive to the wealthy is a clear indication that technological progress has continued at a steady pace. While 'slowed down' or 'sped up' are difficult to quantify, the fact that 3 billion human beings have gained access to smartphone technology over the last decade seems to support the idea that technological progress has in fact sped up. Increasing air transportation speed is a very narrow application of technology and hardly constitutes a meaningful gauge of technical innovation.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >The fact that a relatively low income individual has access to a large number of goods and services which were once considered exclusive to the wealthy is a clear indication that technological progress has continued at a steady pace. No, it's just a clear indication of market efficiencies and/or better engineering. It doesn't say anything about what the grandparent asked for: the rate and magnitude of new scientific/technologic discoveries.
    - soundwave106 10y ago
      One era (early 20th) is the industrial revolution; one era (approx. 1960-now) is the information revolution. It is true that the industrial revolution has slowed down and mostly focused on incremental improvements, but it seems strange to discount the information revolution gains completely. There's been a lot of information revolution gains. That said, I would argue that medicine too has made some pretty significant advances in the 2nd half of the 20th century... mostly in surgery techniques (transplants are 2nd half 20th century), scanning techniques (NMR and CT both were 2nd half 20th century), and pharmaceuticals. Significant vaccines (polio, measles, mumps) were 2nd half of the 20th century developments. Genetic science has made huge gains as of late. Etc.
    - notahacker 10y ago
      But half of the "world of atoms" things the grandparent listed were also market efficiencies or better engineering. Trading average speed for vast improvements in energy efficiency in aircraft in order to make flight accessible to the masses certainly involved vastly more progress of a technical and scientific nature in the late twentieth century than the cited early twentieth century example of wider replication of well-understood principles of plumbing to give the masses indoor toilets.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>The second half of the 20th can't even come close to this level of technological growth. The Green Revolution was a thing. Mass starvation was prevented by technical means.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Since the decommissioning of the Concorde, our fastest commercial means of transportation has actually been getting slower, not faster. Our means of travel have also gotten vastly more efficient. Prioritizing progress in average efficiency over speed of a showpiece that is used for a very small share of actual travel isn't the end of progress, and it is very much change in the world of atoms, not bits.

coldtea 10y ago
>Our means of travel have also gotten vastly more efficient. Hardly vastly. At best within an order of magnitude better, but not even close to that.
- iwintermute 10y ago
  It has gotten twice as cheap (if you look at average ticket prices adjusted to inflation) from 70 to now. Also point about concorde - it's more fuel efficient to fly slower (look at drag coefficient [1]) So from point of view of affordability and mobility for general public - it's good progress. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_transport#/media/File:Qualitive_variation_of_cd_with_mach_number.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_transport#/media/Fi...
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >It has gotten twice as cheap (if you look at average ticket prices adjusted to inflation) from 70 to now. Which is consistent with the gp's point that progress has slowed down. It had gotten 100 to 1000 times cheaper, faster, more efficient to e.g. travel intercontinentally between the 1900 to 1970 that it has between 1970 to now.
  - ExactoKnight 10y ago
    Efficiency is something you begin to care about when the original technology itself is no longer providing the wow factor it used to bring. For efficiency to be considered a huge leap in progress, it needs to be a change on the order of magnitudes....

graeham 10y ago

Oil prices are essentially capped at $60/barrel for the foreseeable future due to unconventional extraction techniques -> was not long ago oil production was thought to have peaked. Solar power can be economical without subsidy. Robotic and minimally invasive surgery. Battery cost becoming viable for mass-market cars. Gene sequencing. Sensors for pennies. New materials (cheaper carbon fibre, metal alloys, semiconductors, graphine/carbon nanotubes). Most of the things mentioned as 'first half of 20th century' coming to the next 5 billion people. For aerospace, how about affordability of a ticket over time (Ryanair vs Concorde)? Space travel: number of journeys per vehicle or time astronauts are able to spend in space (was minutes in early space flight, unlimited now). Transportation speed is a straw-man, the industry optimises for cost not speed.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
No, because you're failing to distinguish between game-changer tech - transistors, DNA sequencing, operating systems, powered flight, all as classes of original and unexpected inventions - and refinement tech, which is made of game-changer inventions made smaller, cheaper, and more widely avaialable. Game changer tech changes what can be imagined. Refinement tech changes what can be bought by consumers. There's been plenty of refinement over the last few decades, but not nearly as much original game changer invention as in the previous decades.
- ExactoKnight 10y ago
  Exactly. Peter Thiel's book Zero to One is actually named after this. Refinement is taking existing tech and moving it up (e.g. 10 to 30). Thiel argues real game changer tech emerges when it brings us from 0 to 1. From nothing to something huge.

areyousure 10y ago

I learned a lot from researching the topics mentioned in this post, and hopefully someone else can also benefit from the following information. tl;dr: Indoor heating significantly predates 1900. Though relevant inventions largely predate 1900, widespread adoption was indeed between 1900 and 1950 for electrification, automobiles, air travel, radio, washing machines, and indoor plumbing. The years after 1950 include most of the developments and use of the Concorde, moon missions, antibiotics, rockets, and dishwashers. I can only describe the inclusion of "space travel" and "satellites" in a list of things from the "first half of the 20th century" as trolling. The remainder of my post is what I found for each topic. The Concorde flew from 1969 to 2003. The last time humans traveled past low-Earth orbit was 1972. (Space exploration itself started in 1957, and since then unmanned space probes have explored no shortage of interesting targets.) Penicillin was identified in 1928 but first made available to civilians in 1945. Of the ~50 antibiotics on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, I found 7 discovered before 1950: penicillin G, penicillin V, chloramphenicol, dapsone, 4-aminosalicylic acid, streptomycin, and pyrazinamide. The final one was not used until after 1950. The basics of electricity, including arc lighting (1802), incandescent lightbulbs (1878), motors (1832 or even the 1740s?), telegraphs (1774), power stations, alternating current, etc were all invented and in use before 1900. Of course, the period of electrification in now-developed countries was roughly from the mid-1880s until around 1950. The basics of automobiles also predate 1900, but mass production began around then. Many major developments in automobiles indeed happened between 1900 and 1950. Air travel via balloons predates 1900 by more than a century, but both rigid airships and (controlled, powered) heaver-than-air flight developed between 1900 and 1950. Rockets were first developed by the 13th century, and found significant and widespread military use before 1900 (eg, the Star-Spangled banner was written in 1814). Modern rocketry probably began in 1926 with the first liquid-fueled rocket launched by Goddard. Germany used the V-2 rocket throughout WWII, and this presumably is the reason for inclusion in "the first half of the 20th century". As mentioned previously, the use of rockets for space exploration (and thus also satellites) did not begin until 1957 with the launch of Sputnik. Human spaceflight began in 1961. Early radio predates 1900, but indeed radio largely developed between 1900 and 1950. I had difficulty summarizing the history of water treatment; it seems that many inventions predated 1900 but indeed the period between 1900 and 1950 was the main significant period of development in the United States. Indoor heating predates the invention of writing. Almost every development in the history and widespread use of heating predates 1900. Washing machines predate 1900, but the development and widespread use of electric washing machines was indeed between 1900 and 1950. Dishwashers also predate 1900. Significant aspects of their development happened between 1900 and 1950, but their widespread use was after 1950. Indoor plumbing predated 1900 by millennia, but indeed the widespread period of adoption in the United States was between 1900 and 1950. I do not know how to summarize the improvements in sanitation, but I would probably say that 1900 to 1950 did not feature particularly notable improvements in literacy.