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Reading this, I realized that I have no ability to differentiate actual in use fab technology from science fiction. What the engineers and scientists do in mode

Reading this, I realized that I have no ability to differentiate actual in use fab technology from science fiction. What the engineers and scientists do in modern fabs is in my mind more impressive than the entire Apollo program.

tempsolution 7y ago
There is nothing particularly impressive about the Apollo program, at least not these days. You are essentially comparing today's frontier of High-Tech research with 50 year old "needs to work reliably" technology, which had different requirements even back then.
- lgats 7y ago
  Humans went to the moon. I'm impressed. Magic box I hold in my hand to communicate near-instantaneously with the other side of the world... somehow less impressive.
  - MaysonL 7y ago
    "Every now and again there is a moment that brings home how strange life in the twenty-first century can be. There I was in Brighton, England, holding a thin slice of glass and metal which was made in South Korea and ran American software, and which could show me the President of America threatening the Supreme Leader of North Korea." John Higgs: Stranger Than We Can Imagine an alternative history of the 20th century, p. 5
  - basementcat 7y ago
    Part of sending humans to the moon included the equipment to talk with them while they were there. EDIT: And bring back live video.
  - Fr0styMatt88 7y ago
    It's amazing when you remind yourself that your web request is actually causing something physical to happen on the other side of the world. That blows my mind every time I really think about it. It's all so seamless most of the time that it's easy to forget that it's an actual physical process that happens in the real world, with real EM waves travelling through the real physical world.
  - taneq 7y ago
    Familiarity breeds contempt, huh.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    We should be having plenty of both by today. Nobody is saying smartphones aren't impressive, but there's argument to be made that we messed up on the space exploration front.
kregasaurusrex 7y ago
A lot of people talk about how wide-reaching the technologies spun out from NASA in the Apollo Era were; whereas I see the research that goes into making chips smaller has an equal if not greater reach. Considering how widespread the modern IC is these incremental improvements need to become more and more novel, to the point where entirely new approaches need to be designed to combat the limits of physics itself.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  The weird thing, in a sense, is that tech that seems close to nanotechology and nanomachines exists simultaneously with extremely mundane tech. Trumpf is generating nanoscale EUV but I'm still hammer nails into the wall to support my coat hanger rod. What's up? Where's my flying cars, etc.
  - kregasaurusrex 7y ago
    I think nanomachines are still purpose-built for solving small problems, and haven't been particularly useful outside the medical field yet because 'scaling is hard', in this case being enough to have noticeable effects. Seeing a household similar to The Jetsons' is still a ways off in my eyes.
    - awalton 7y ago
      Nanomachines are hardly being built at all from what I can tell - I doubt if any have progressed far beyond laboratories. Meanwhile, micro-machines are everywhere these days - MEMS accelerometers and gyros and SAW MEMS microphones are in every cellphone made, every smartwatch has similar features, DLP TVs have actually gone out of style but were micromirror devices, MEMS barometers and altimeters are cheap and commercial drones commonly have one or more, MEMS cell sorters and biochips are actually being used in production medical labs, the list just continues on for ages... (I could go on a long aside about the households comment, but I'll save that rant for another time. Suffice it to say, we're doing jack shit with technology in homes, and that alone is hugely depressing. Innovation in that space seems to be sorely limited to what you can bring in and plug in to a socket, rather than disrupting home designs to better fit what our technology is actually capable of pulling off today - just look at the absolutely pathetic state of residential air conditioning, vs what can be done with passive cooling and occupant-aware HVAC systems.)

tempsolution 7y ago

There is nothing particularly impressive about the Apollo program, at least not these days. You are essentially comparing today's frontier of High-Tech research with 50 year old "needs to work reliably" technology, which had different requirements even back then.

lgats 7y ago
Humans went to the moon. I'm impressed. Magic box I hold in my hand to communicate near-instantaneously with the other side of the world... somehow less impressive.
- MaysonL 7y ago
  "Every now and again there is a moment that brings home how strange life in the twenty-first century can be. There I was in Brighton, England, holding a thin slice of glass and metal which was made in South Korea and ran American software, and which could show me the President of America threatening the Supreme Leader of North Korea." John Higgs: Stranger Than We Can Imagine an alternative history of the 20th century, p. 5
- basementcat 7y ago
  Part of sending humans to the moon included the equipment to talk with them while they were there. EDIT: And bring back live video.
- Fr0styMatt88 7y ago
  It's amazing when you remind yourself that your web request is actually causing something physical to happen on the other side of the world. That blows my mind every time I really think about it. It's all so seamless most of the time that it's easy to forget that it's an actual physical process that happens in the real world, with real EM waves travelling through the real physical world.
- taneq 7y ago
  Familiarity breeds contempt, huh.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  We should be having plenty of both by today. Nobody is saying smartphones aren't impressive, but there's argument to be made that we messed up on the space exploration front.

kregasaurusrex 7y ago

A lot of people talk about how wide-reaching the technologies spun out from NASA in the Apollo Era were; whereas I see the research that goes into making chips smaller has an equal if not greater reach. Considering how widespread the modern IC is these incremental improvements need to become more and more novel, to the point where entirely new approaches need to be designed to combat the limits of physics itself.

joe_the_user 7y ago
The weird thing, in a sense, is that tech that seems close to nanotechology and nanomachines exists simultaneously with extremely mundane tech. Trumpf is generating nanoscale EUV but I'm still hammer nails into the wall to support my coat hanger rod. What's up? Where's my flying cars, etc.
- kregasaurusrex 7y ago
  I think nanomachines are still purpose-built for solving small problems, and haven't been particularly useful outside the medical field yet because 'scaling is hard', in this case being enough to have noticeable effects. Seeing a household similar to The Jetsons' is still a ways off in my eyes.
  - awalton 7y ago
    Nanomachines are hardly being built at all from what I can tell - I doubt if any have progressed far beyond laboratories. Meanwhile, micro-machines are everywhere these days - MEMS accelerometers and gyros and SAW MEMS microphones are in every cellphone made, every smartwatch has similar features, DLP TVs have actually gone out of style but were micromirror devices, MEMS barometers and altimeters are cheap and commercial drones commonly have one or more, MEMS cell sorters and biochips are actually being used in production medical labs, the list just continues on for ages... (I could go on a long aside about the households comment, but I'll save that rant for another time. Suffice it to say, we're doing jack shit with technology in homes, and that alone is hugely depressing. Innovation in that space seems to be sorely limited to what you can bring in and plug in to a socket, rather than disrupting home designs to better fit what our technology is actually capable of pulling off today - just look at the absolutely pathetic state of residential air conditioning, vs what can be done with passive cooling and occupant-aware HVAC systems.)