5 ms·

To go down in a long list of things executives said wouldn’t happen, that ended up happening.

n8henry 7y ago
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
rayiner 7y ago
Read an book on space/aerospace engineering from the 1980s and look at how many things happened. Supersonic was a huge bust. (The Concorde is closer in time to wooden biplanes than to today. Routine supersonic travel still nowhere on the horizon.) Energy technology has been a huge disappointment. When I grew up, we were going to have nuclear fusion, expanding the scope of what society can do. Today we’re back to windmills and we’re told to put on a sweater. AI was of course a huge bust once.
- pritovido 7y ago
  Windmills' technology has improved dramatically, like also nuclear fusion's. We are not "back" to windmills that give 3 MegaWatts of power because they never existed in the first place, like affordable solar panels with 20-40% efficiency. Progress is not automatic. It is millions of times harder to create or improve a technology than imagine it. And also takes lots of money. We have nuclear tech because Manhattan project, because WWII(and because they were scientists coming from Europe that were scare of Hitler). It took a tremendous amount of money and sacrifice to get there.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    We have nuclear tech because Manhattan project, because WWII(and because they were scientists coming from Europe that were scare of Hitler). It took a tremendous amount of money and sacrifice to get there. No, Manhattan project took trivial amount of money by today's standard. It costed less than the rounding error in typically given federal budget figures for past few decades.
    - mr_toad 7y ago
      It cost 2 billion in 1939. That’s over 20 billion in today’s dollars. That’s about the same as NASA’s annual budget.
      - xyzzyz 7y ago
        Yes, and that's smaller than a rounding error in our current $4.7T budget. Hell, the $100B (today's dollars) Apollo program would also be smaller than the rounding error, since it was spread over a decade. The R&D costs on F-35 were almost triple the whole costs of Manhattan project. Truly, we are easily able to afford projects like Manhattan and Apollo today, it's just we aren't able to pull them off anymore.
        JamesBarney 7y ago
        https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/united-states-should-prepare-build-prototype-fusion-power-plant-panel-says https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/united-states-should... But of that 4.7T budget we only spend 600 million of that on fusion research.
- mr_toad 7y ago
  > Supersonic was a huge bust. With the caveat: for commercial travel. And even then it’s partly due to noise restrictions. It’s not like the technology for supersonic flight isn’t widespread.
threeseed 7y ago
He never said it wouldn't happen, “Maybe it will never happen.”
mikestew 7y ago
What list? The one where Thomas Watson said there’d never be a world-wide market for more than five computers? Other than that, what else does that list have to stack up against: Nuclear power, let alone fusion. What happened to “too cheap to meter”? Supersonic travel: raynier already pointed out what a bust the Concorde was. Nothing else on the horizon now. Automation giving me a 20 hour work week. Nope, capital holders just skim that efficiency right into their pockets. I’d go on, but suffice it to say that about the only thing much different than my childhood in the 70s are computers in our pockets. Revolutionary, no doubt, but we are still burning oil for our energy needs, our cars don’t fly, and I still show up and do my 40 hours. And healthcare has gotten worse in the U. S., not better, if you can believe that. So, yeah, when the head of the autonomous driving division of VW says Level 5 ain’t gonna happen, I don’t immediately jump to doubting him/her and attacking their resume.
- poordaniel 7y ago
  okay boomer
- jellicle 7y ago
  ALL of the autonomous driving experts say that level 5 is, at best, 50 years off. Unanimous. They don't know how to do it, see no path to doing it. It's hard! Maybe we'll make real AI and we can enslave our human-level intelligent computers to drive cars for us, at least until they figure out how to rebel. Maybe. But we don't know how today, and not tomorrow or the next day either. And yet HN threads are all about "here are all these cool things that will happen tomorrow if Elon Jesus delivers". He ain't going to deliver, people.
- njarboe 7y ago
  Check out Boom for a new company working on supersonic airplanes [1]. [1]https://boomsupersonic.com/ https://boomsupersonic.com/ Health care is worse? More expensive, yes, but anybody getting cancer and wanting to live is much better off now than in the 1970's.
jariel 7y ago
The list of 'visionaries' who said something was going to happen, but never did is 10x longer.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Read an book on space/aerospace engineering from the 1980s and look at how many things happened. Supersonic was a huge bust. (The Concorde is closer in time to wooden biplanes than to today. Routine supersonic travel still nowhere on the horizon.) Energy technology has been a huge disappointment. When I grew up, we were going to have nuclear fusion, expanding the scope of what society can do. Today we’re back to windmills and we’re told to put on a sweater. AI was of course a huge bust once.

pritovido 7y ago
Windmills' technology has improved dramatically, like also nuclear fusion's. We are not "back" to windmills that give 3 MegaWatts of power because they never existed in the first place, like affordable solar panels with 20-40% efficiency. Progress is not automatic. It is millions of times harder to create or improve a technology than imagine it. And also takes lots of money. We have nuclear tech because Manhattan project, because WWII(and because they were scientists coming from Europe that were scare of Hitler). It took a tremendous amount of money and sacrifice to get there.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  We have nuclear tech because Manhattan project, because WWII(and because they were scientists coming from Europe that were scare of Hitler). It took a tremendous amount of money and sacrifice to get there. No, Manhattan project took trivial amount of money by today's standard. It costed less than the rounding error in typically given federal budget figures for past few decades.
  - mr_toad 7y ago
    It cost 2 billion in 1939. That’s over 20 billion in today’s dollars. That’s about the same as NASA’s annual budget.
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      Yes, and that's smaller than a rounding error in our current $4.7T budget. Hell, the $100B (today's dollars) Apollo program would also be smaller than the rounding error, since it was spread over a decade. The R&D costs on F-35 were almost triple the whole costs of Manhattan project. Truly, we are easily able to afford projects like Manhattan and Apollo today, it's just we aren't able to pull them off anymore.
      - JamesBarney 7y ago
        https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/united-states-should-prepare-build-prototype-fusion-power-plant-panel-says https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/united-states-should... But of that 4.7T budget we only spend 600 million of that on fusion research.
mr_toad 7y ago
> Supersonic was a huge bust. With the caveat: for commercial travel. And even then it’s partly due to noise restrictions. It’s not like the technology for supersonic flight isn’t widespread.

threeseed 7y ago

He never said it wouldn't happen, “Maybe it will never happen.”

mikestew 7y ago

What list? The one where Thomas Watson said there’d never be a world-wide market for more than five computers? Other than that, what else does that list have to stack up against: Nuclear power, let alone fusion. What happened to “too cheap to meter”? Supersonic travel: raynier already pointed out what a bust the Concorde was. Nothing else on the horizon now. Automation giving me a 20 hour work week. Nope, capital holders just skim that efficiency right into their pockets. I’d go on, but suffice it to say that about the only thing much different than my childhood in the 70s are computers in our pockets. Revolutionary, no doubt, but we are still burning oil for our energy needs, our cars don’t fly, and I still show up and do my 40 hours. And healthcare has gotten worse in the U. S., not better, if you can believe that. So, yeah, when the head of the autonomous driving division of VW says Level 5 ain’t gonna happen, I don’t immediately jump to doubting him/her and attacking their resume.

poordaniel 7y ago
okay boomer
jellicle 7y ago
ALL of the autonomous driving experts say that level 5 is, at best, 50 years off. Unanimous. They don't know how to do it, see no path to doing it. It's hard! Maybe we'll make real AI and we can enslave our human-level intelligent computers to drive cars for us, at least until they figure out how to rebel. Maybe. But we don't know how today, and not tomorrow or the next day either. And yet HN threads are all about "here are all these cool things that will happen tomorrow if Elon Jesus delivers". He ain't going to deliver, people.
njarboe 7y ago
Check out Boom for a new company working on supersonic airplanes [1]. [1]https://boomsupersonic.com/ https://boomsupersonic.com/ Health care is worse? More expensive, yes, but anybody getting cancer and wanting to live is much better off now than in the 1970's.

jariel 7y ago

The list of 'visionaries' who said something was going to happen, but never did is 10x longer.