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I love the tone of amazement and excitement in the video. The images were amazing, but the tone really stuck with me. I wonder what could be done to bring back

I love the tone of amazement and excitement in the video. The images were amazing, but the tone really stuck with me. I wonder what could be done to bring back that type of mass amazement and excitement towards technology? When I think of the future I'm blown away by the possibilities of CRISPER, 3d printing, energy storage, block chains, driver-less cars, UBI, space exploration and more. We are advancing so quickly on so many fronts, and yet most people are indifferent or down right hostile toward it.

jacquesm 7y ago
The mid 70's were just about optimal. Lots of stuff you could pick apart and make new things from with standardized parts. After that more and more integrated circuits made it into consumer electronics and if the volume was large enough they'd be custom so useless to either repair or be used as a source of parts.
- teddyh 7y ago
  That’s an illusion. Could you, in the mid-’70s, repair a vacuum tube? A capacitor? No. You threw it away and got a new one, and you didn’t care how it worked inside. Older artisans were probably even then horrified by the ‘new’ age of people who didn’t know how to properly blow glass bulbs. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19113359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19113359
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Not really relevant to the parent's valid point. Maybe you couldn't repair the switch, potentiometer or the valve, but you could nearly always buy a standard replacement. From just about any suitable shop. Chances are the same switches and valves were used in dozens of products and makes, and there would be third party alternatives - cheaper with shorter life. Sure, there were a few uncommon specialist tubes in some things, but they were hugely outnumbered by standard components. Now everything is specific and moulded to fit just one product. You try to buy a Sony XYZ1244/a switch, and find Sony don't make that part available, and it's custom moulded to only fit that one particular product. Maybe you can buy a switch as part of the whole control module that includes it, and a bunch of custom ICs at £99. Or maybe not as you're not an approved Sony repair shop.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    When a part is botched it is botched, though - story time - I did more than once repair power transistors and valves with broken off legs. But that doesn't really matter, the idea was that parts were exchangeable between different manufacturers and that nowadays almost everything except a handful of passive components is custom made for that particular device. I understand the economics, but it does not help for serviceability or learning from what you are looking at. Good luck tracing the schematic of even a small IC, I spent hours taking apart color tv's and sketching the schematics of their guts to understand how it all worked.
asmithmd1 7y ago
Your comment reminds me of Peter Thiel's 2x2 matrix of opptimistic/pessimistic x definte/indefinite The US in the 50's and early 60's was definitely optimistic - everything is getting better soon because <nuclear|space|laser> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140924171143-103827-zero-to-one-peter-thiel-s-view-on-the-importance-of-definite-optimism/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140924171143-103827-zero-to...
pjc50 7y ago
Things started to go wrong and limitations started to appear. The 1970s saw the US hit three big limitations: the failure of Vietnam, the oil crisis, and the collapse of Iran. On the technology front, that's when the environmental and social downsides of technology started to become really prominent. Three Mile Island, CFCs, leaded petrol, and so on. That's why all the 50s and 60s stuff is so breathlessly unconditionally optimistic, and subsequent material has switched to skepticism. People have become used to "new technology announcement === a few years later we're going to hear about the terrible downside, while the originators lied about all the safety risks". Driverless cars are absolutely in the middle of that at the moment. Vaping is currently experiencing a safety backlash.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  The big transition was that productivity growth in the US became very slow.

jacquesm 7y ago

The mid 70's were just about optimal. Lots of stuff you could pick apart and make new things from with standardized parts. After that more and more integrated circuits made it into consumer electronics and if the volume was large enough they'd be custom so useless to either repair or be used as a source of parts.

teddyh 7y ago
That’s an illusion. Could you, in the mid-’70s, repair a vacuum tube? A capacitor? No. You threw it away and got a new one, and you didn’t care how it worked inside. Older artisans were probably even then horrified by the ‘new’ age of people who didn’t know how to properly blow glass bulbs. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19113359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19113359
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Not really relevant to the parent's valid point. Maybe you couldn't repair the switch, potentiometer or the valve, but you could nearly always buy a standard replacement. From just about any suitable shop. Chances are the same switches and valves were used in dozens of products and makes, and there would be third party alternatives - cheaper with shorter life. Sure, there were a few uncommon specialist tubes in some things, but they were hugely outnumbered by standard components. Now everything is specific and moulded to fit just one product. You try to buy a Sony XYZ1244/a switch, and find Sony don't make that part available, and it's custom moulded to only fit that one particular product. Maybe you can buy a switch as part of the whole control module that includes it, and a bunch of custom ICs at £99. Or maybe not as you're not an approved Sony repair shop.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  When a part is botched it is botched, though - story time - I did more than once repair power transistors and valves with broken off legs. But that doesn't really matter, the idea was that parts were exchangeable between different manufacturers and that nowadays almost everything except a handful of passive components is custom made for that particular device. I understand the economics, but it does not help for serviceability or learning from what you are looking at. Good luck tracing the schematic of even a small IC, I spent hours taking apart color tv's and sketching the schematics of their guts to understand how it all worked.

asmithmd1 7y ago

Your comment reminds me of Peter Thiel's 2x2 matrix of opptimistic/pessimistic x definte/indefinite The US in the 50's and early 60's was definitely optimistic - everything is getting better soon because <nuclear|space|laser> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140924171143-103827-zero-to-one-peter-thiel-s-view-on-the-importance-of-definite-optimism/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140924171143-103827-zero-to...

pjc50 7y ago

Things started to go wrong and limitations started to appear. The 1970s saw the US hit three big limitations: the failure of Vietnam, the oil crisis, and the collapse of Iran. On the technology front, that's when the environmental and social downsides of technology started to become really prominent. Three Mile Island, CFCs, leaded petrol, and so on. That's why all the 50s and 60s stuff is so breathlessly unconditionally optimistic, and subsequent material has switched to skepticism. People have become used to "new technology announcement === a few years later we're going to hear about the terrible downside, while the originators lied about all the safety risks". Driverless cars are absolutely in the middle of that at the moment. Vaping is currently experiencing a safety backlash.

pfdietz 7y ago
The big transition was that productivity growth in the US became very slow.